The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics is all around the corner. With one of the best 12 teams competing, the men’s basketball section will be fun to watch. Being the solely Asian team on the stage, Team Japan is surging in its competitiveness with a possible all-time roster of its history, which made it to the Olympics for the first time (except attending the Tokyo 2020 as a host) since 1976.
Same as South Sudan, Japan is the only team to represent a continent with the lowest expectation to advance further in the game. However, we shouldn’t forget the way the team qualified for the Olympics in advance, which made a Cinderella run in the World Cup last year. Instead of being unknown in the basketball world, the country is currently changing its image in this aspect.
In the 1990s, Slam Dunk, one of the most popular sports-themed manga and cartoons in Japan, recorded a historical success in its publications and viewership but didn’t ignite the interest of basketball in this country generally. But the recent rise in Japan’s basketball eventually did it. Could Japan be an underdog in the event? Let’s take a look at its profile.
Impressive Performances in Recent Years
Despite losing all games in the preliminary round of the 2019 World Cup and the group stage of the Olympics in the homeland, the consecutive failures didn’t frustrate Japan’s aspirations. On the other hand, they learned and concluded lessons from those international experiences which they lacked in the past.
In 2021, Tom Hovasse took the helm of the Japan men’s basketball team after helping the women’s basketball team win a silver medal in the Tokyo Olympics, leading the team to flip the script. Japan seized the opportunity as a co-host of the 2023 World Cup with home-game advantages, winning three of five games which included two upsets to Finland and Venezuela in the group phase. The victory over Cape Verde in the classification round allowed Japan to become one of the first batch teams to clinch the Olympics berth.
Though Japan dropped the two exhibitions in the advent of the Olympics, the team fought fearlessly facing the two top-tier opponents that it picked to play: Germany (2023 World Cup Champion) and Serbia (2023 World Cup runner-up). In these two losses, Japan still made a statement showing their long-lasting consistency in every possession, relentlessly running for chances despite trailing. Its mentality can’t be underestimated.
As a Colorado native and former Penn State player, coach Hovasse brought his basketball mindset and winning mentality that learned from college to Japan. After achieving some milestones for Japan’s basketball, Hovasse had made the country, which was always disadvantaged in continental games, start to believe in basketball. Tactically, knowing Japan has the shortest average height in the event, coach Hovasse had already become an expert in plotting a shorter team on the court from coaching the Japanese women’s team, concentrating on relentless runs and three-pointers.
A Revamped Roster Builds Japan’s Confidence
Through the satisfying results during a year past, it’s convincing that coach Hovasse had his best 12 players to support his basketball system. Looking through the roster, the first one, maybe the most prominent one globally, that we can notice is Yuta Watanabe, a six-year NBA veteran who experienced his high with the Brooklyn Nets in the 2022-23 season. Though he eventually left the NBA this year, his experience, leadership, great movement with a 6-9 height and NBA-level versatility in games would be huge to Japan.
Rui Hachimura was absent from Japan’s recent successes. But his rejoin is expected to take the team’s competitiveness to the next level. Playing with the Los Angeles Lakers so far, he had developed as a reliable mid-range shooter and defender and always got prepared to play big games. Last season, he averaged 13.5 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 1.2 steals, improving his three-point made to 42.2%. Lining up with Watanabe, the NBA duo is set to boost Japan’s offense with an all-rounded skill set.
Japan’s backcourt ladder is another key aspect that shouldn’t be ignored. Those relatively shorter guards can showcase their adept speed and ball-handling which sufficiently cover their weakness at height. Yuki Kawamura, who signed an Exhibit-10 contract with the Memphis Grizzlies in July, is a reliable playmaker with scoring ability and sights, who led a huge comeback to Finland in last year’s World Cup; Keisei Tominaga, a former Nebraska graduate who led the Huskies to the NCAA March Madness this year, can offer his well-known shooting. They both played a key role in those important wins that qualified Japan for the Olympics last year.
For others, 5-6 guard Yuki Togashi, the shortest player on the roster, was selected to be the captain of Japan. His ten-year experience with the national team had set him as a solid and reliable starter at backcourt; Josh Hawkinson, an American-born Japanese center, is going to protect the rim and provide more strength in the paint for Japan; Yudai Baba, with various international resume (G-League, NBL), is going to bring his defensive prowess coming off the bench. The 33-year veteran Makoto Hiejima can provide his excellent three-point shooting that rescued Japan once in the World Cup last year.
As coach Hovasse revealed his ambition after Japan was certified to take the trip to Paris, his goal is to advance to the quarterfinals. Although he got close to his last ambition to beat Team USA after Japan fell short in the final of women’s basketball in the 2020 Olympics, the configurations on the men’s side provide the possibility to achieve the goal. Like Greece, Japan is likely to be an underdog.
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