Bahrain’s senior men’s national basketball team have risen an impressive 15 places to 69th on the latest edition of the FIBA World Ranking.
The classification of men’s national teams was the first released by the game’s global governing body FIBA since the completion of the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023.
The Bahrainis went up to 69th where they now have 150.0 ranking points. The nationals are also ranked 12th in FIBA Asia, and second amongst GCC teams, behind only Saudi Arabia, who are 66th.
The UAE are 103rd, Qatar 104th, Kuwait 110th and Oman are 149th. Bahrain enjoyed the second-highest climb amongst Asian teams. Lebanese had the best rise of 16 places to 28th.
Bahrain’s improvement can be attributed to the national team’s historic five-game sweep of the Asian pre-qualifiers for the Paris Olympic Games 2024, held in Damascus just last month.
There, they put in a dominant performance against Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, hosts Syria, Indonesia and India. They thus became one of five national teams who have booked their place in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, which Bahrain have done for the first time.
Bahrain will be one of a 24-nation field that will be battling for just four available berths in the men’s basketball tournament at the Paris Olympics.
The nationals are also set to compete in the Hangzhou Asian Games in China starting later this month. The Bahrainis are to play in Group C of the preliminary round along with the Philippines, Jordan and Thailand.
