Basketball at the 2004 Summer Olympics took place at the Helliniko Olympic Indoor Arena in Athens for the preliminary rounds, with the later stages being held in the Olympic Indoor Hall at the Athens Olympic Sports Complex.
In each of these Olympic basketball tournaments, 12 teams take part. The host nation (Greece in 2004) automatically receives a berth in the tournament. By winning the two World Championship tournaments in 2002, Yugoslavia also put a team into the men's tournament and the United States a team in the women's tournament.
The remaining 10 spots in each tournament were allocated by the five Olympic zones. Each of these zones held its own tournaments to select its entries in the Olympic tournament. Africa was allocated one spot in each of these, Oceania was allocated two apiece, and Europe was allocated three. Furthermore, the Americas were was allocated three teams for the men's tournament and just one in the women's tournament, whereas Asia was allocated just one in the men's tournament and three in the women's tournament.
Read more about Basketball At The 2004 Summer Olympics: Medalists, Qualification, Format, Men's Tournament, Women's Tournament, Final Standings
Famous quotes containing the words basketball and/or summer:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)
“The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us, visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)