The Rio Olympic basketball tournament began with 12 teams and 11 NBA prospects. The field is down to four teams and two players are still alive in our power rankings. See who is left standing for the semifinals.
The men’s Olympic basketball tournament field is down to only four teams after a rigorous preliminary round and an action-packed day of quarterfinal games.
Throughout the games, we’ve been ranking international NBA prospects, whose rights are owned by NBA teams. These players have yet to appear on an NBA court, but could be coming to a city near you in the not-too-distant future.
We began with 11 players, but two players (Alex Abrines and Nicolas Brussino) were eliminated from our list before the preliminary round concluded due to lack of playing time.
Our list was trimmed down to six players at the end of the preliminary round, as Chinese centers Wang Zhelin and Zhou Qi were out of competition, along with Michael Gbinije of Nigeria.
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Heading into the quarterfinals, there were six players from four teams still alive in our rankings, but by the end of Wednesday night.
Lithuania, France, Argentina, and Croatia each lost its quarterfinal match on Wednesday. Four more players were knocked out of our rankings as a result.
Before we take a look at the two players left standing, let’s take a look at the group of players whose tournaments came to an end in Rio.
Next: Eliminated in Quarterfinals