One of the highlights of the trip to Astana, Kazakhstan, was attending the FIBA Asia Cup (Saudi Arabia – 2025) Qualifier basketball game between Kazakhstan and Qatar. Qatar qualified for the Asia Cup by defeated Kazakhstan 92-71. It was a fascinating game. I knew Qatar gives citizenship to athletes to supplement their international sports teams. It makes sense with their big pot of money and few Qatari athletes. The men’s basketball team had two Americans, Tyler Harris, a 6-10 center who played for the Auburn Tigers, graduating in 2016. The other was point guard Mike Lewis, who played his college basketball at Duquesne, a mid-major university in Pittsburgh. They were the class of the game, being a clear tier above everyone else and they combined for 33 points. Qatar completed its roster with Montenegrin, Bosnian and some Afro-Qatar players. All of them seem to play or have played in the QBL (Qatar Basketball League). Qatar did have a local on the team, the 5-8 point guard was Qatari and he was pretty good. They were up by 24 points when we left late in the third quarterKazakhstan had 4 or 5 “bigs” but they were all pretty mechanical. I was surprised by the many mistakes and sloppy play by both teams. Qatar seemed to be working on their younger players, especially a big center that looked like Zion Williamson. There was a pretty good crowd and oil money paid for a beautiful, modern arena. I was left wondering how much the foreign players get paid by the Qatar government to represent their country. The team was led by a Morrocan coach.
For the first time in my life I saw three consecutive 5-second violations. Kazakhstan couldn’t inbound in time and turned the ball over. Then Qatar did the same thing so it went back to Kazakhstan. Again, a 5-second violation gave the ball back to Qatar. Finally, Qatar inbounded the ball and play continues. It was indicative of the level of game play for the evening. I was highly entertained however and will try to see how the teams do in the Asia Cup!
We had fun walking to the game from our hotel on the icy sidewalks. The students chose to eat at Burger King; adolescents love fast food, and the BK franchise has not come to Uzbekistan yet, neither McDonalds or Starbucks.
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