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The Japanese national basketball team represents Japan in international basketball competitions. It is governed by the Japan Basketball Association (JBA). (Japanese: 日本バスケットボール協会)〔http://www.fiba.com/pages/eng/fc/FIBA/fibaStru/nfLeag/nfProf.asp?nationalFederationNumber=309〕 A 1936 founding member of FIBA Asia, Japan has one of Asia's longest basketball traditions. Japan has one of the most successful basketball teams in Asia. It has won the Asian Basketball Championships twice and is the second leading nation in qualifications to the event. The team qualified for the Olympic Games six times and for the FIBA World Cup four times. In the last decades, Japan brought forth several of Asia's elite basketball players who competed in the NBA and in Europe. These players include Yuta Tabuse, J.R. Sakuragi, Takuya Kawamura, Takumi Ishizaki and others. However, they rarely play for the national team, which caused Team Japan to fall behind Asia's elite competition from Iran, South Korea, Jordan, Philippines and China. ==History== Japan's national team had its first international tournament at the 3rd Far Eastern Games held in Tokyo in 1917. Japan representative at this time was the team of the Kyoto YMCA. Later, the team was a founding member of the Olympics Basketball competition in Berlin 1936. Henceforth, they participated almost every time until 1976. Team Japan was a regular at world tournaments. It had its debut at the FIBA World Championship in 1963. It was the top team in Asia, as it won the championship there in 1965 and 1971. Since the rise of China, Japan declined a little bit and appearances at global events became scarcer. As runner-up at the Fukuoka Universiade in 1995, ''Team Nippon'' (as the Japanese are also called) had a streak of success and qualified for the 1998 FIBA World Championship, its first qualification in over 30 years. Coached by the Croat Željko Pavličević, the team played well but did not make it out of the primary round, where it lost its fourth-place battle against former Semi-finalist New Zealand. In recent years, Japan played against more intense competition from the Middle East. Combined with many player absences from the team, Team Nippon struggled to win medals at the Asian Championships since its silver medal in 1997. At the 2008 event in their home country (Tokushima), the team finished at the 8th position and missed qualification for both the Beijing Olympic Tournament and qualification to the 2010 FIBA World Championship. At the 2009 FIBA Asia tournament the team sank to No. 10 position, its worst performance. This was partly due to the change of the head coach just before the tournament. To better the results, the American coach Tom Wisman took over the management of the team in 2010 and made some considerable improvements. Wisman just came off a phenomenal year in the Japanese Basketball League (JBL) where he had led Tochigi Brex to its first and only national title. At the FIBA Asia Stankovic Cup in 2010, Team Nippon was defeated by host Lebanon but exceeded expectations as it finished as runner-up. At the 2011 FIBA Asia Championship, the listed goal of the Final Four was missed as the team reached the 7th position out of 15. The team managed to defeate finalists, Jordan, but then had to play Korea in the first playoff round and were defeated. In March 2012, the Japan Association dismissed Wissmann and the country's coaching legend Kimikazu Suzuki took over the reigns of the team. Suzuki, concurrently coaching the Aisin Seahorses had initial success as Team Nippon finished Runner-up at the next FIBA Asian Cup which was held in Tokyo in September 2012. Aimed at the acquisition of a 2014 FIBA World Cup berth, the team finished the 2013 FIBA Asia Championship at the 9th position where it lost its last three games. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Japan national basketball team」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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