After the success of the basketball tournament at the London Olympic Games in 1948, the Secretary General of FIBA, Mr. William Jones, decided to regain the international competition dynamics for basketball, and got involved in the task of organizing a World Championship, with Argentina being designated as the host country. His support led to the desired results, and in October 22, 1950, the newly created World Cup saw its first game at the Luna Park of Buenos Aires. Peru and Yugoslavia had the honor to play the first game in the history of the competition. Ten countries joined this first edition in Argentina, and the host team became the first champion.

In spite of poor infrastracture and political meddling, the competiton went on during the 50s. It wasn't until 1970 when most of the problems handicapping the World Cup disappeared and the tournament returned to the normality of being held over a four year span period, with most participants taking it very seriously. By the 80s, the competition was firmly established in the international scene, and even the political boycotts of the Olympic Games in Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984) didn't seem to affect the World Cup.

NOTES

• Official FIBA scores and statistics extended and corrected with multilingual edition. All the names of players, referees, courts, and cities are written in their original spelling (or a standard transcription into Latin characters, in the case of other alphabets). This is the reason why some names may slightly differ in form with respect to other unstandardized information sources.