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The Colombian men’s national basketball team suffered pair of blowouts in the Russian Friendship Cup recently.
The team lost 155-53 to a local team from the city of Perm before losing 108-57 to Venezuela.
There was just one major problem. It wasn’t actually the Colombian national team, and nobody from Colombia’s ministry of sport was aware of the tournament.
Instead, a group of impostors assumed the identity of the Colombian national team, uniforms and all, in order to enter the tournament run by former NBA All-Star Andrei Kirilenko.
Colombian Basketball Fed Claims No Knowledge Of Team In Russian Tournament
“The Colombian Basketball Federation did not grant endorsement to any club to participate in the Russian Friendship Cup,” the federation said on Thursday according to the Associated Press.
Kirilenko, however, insists that the team did nothing improper.
“We would like to emphasize that all our interactions with the Colombian team took place exclusively through official communication channels,” he told Match TV. “Our position remains unchanged: all communications and coordination are conducted only through verified and official sources.”
Kirilenko claims that the federation only stopped associating with the team after the two losses. The team was scheduled to play the Russian national team on Friday. But that game has since been canceled.
“After the first game, we understand that the current level of the Colombian team is lagging behind what was expected, which causes some disappointment for all of us,” Kirilenko said. “In this regard, we have already revised the schedule and format of the tournament to ensure a more balanced and competitive competition.”
It appears we have a classic, “he said, she said situation.” But it’s amusing any way you slice it.
Either a bunch of random guys decided to pose as the Colombian national team in order to get trounced in a random Russian tournament. Or the Colombian national team is so bad that the country’s government opted not to ackowledge its existence.