Korean male basketball team aims at Rio Olympics

With the triangle formation of Ha Seung-jin, Moon Tae-young and Lee Seung-hyun, Korea’s male basketball team aims to compete at the 2016 Rio Olympics in 20 years after the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The upcoming competition is the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship to be held at Changsha, in the central Chinese Province of Hunan in September. The Korean basketball team is expected to have a fierce competition against China, Iran and the Philippines for a ticket to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

As most team members are shorter than competitors, the Korean team plans to play a pressing defense and swift attack utilizing all 12 players. To reap a successful result, the team’s centers and forwards must not be pushed out by counterparts under the basket. To this end, the national team’s coach Kim Dong-kwang has set up a triangle formation where 221-cm-tall Han Seung-jin plays in the center having 196-cm-tall Moon Tae-young with keen scoring ability and 197-cm-tall Lee Seung-hyun with strong power on the right and left sides.

During the practice game with LG on Thursday, Kim put Ha in the center position and Moon and Lee in the forward positions to check their movement and collaboration. During the game, Lee and Moon exchanged passes to move out the LG’s defenders and created chances for Ha to shoot. When it comes to the defense, Moon-Ha-Lee triangle formation did not allow any chance for the counterpart team players to shoot under the basket. Kim expressed satisfaction on the formation and said, “Moon and Lee create chances for Ha to shoot and make up for weak points. Ha plays more actively when playing with Lee.”