The Asian Basketball Confederation announced on July 10 that North Korea and Saudi Arabia have formally withdrawn from the 21st ABC Championship, which will be held from July 20-28 at Shanghai, China.
North Korea was bracketed in Group B with South Korea while Saudi Arabia, which finished third in 1999, is in Group C in the Preliminary Round. With North Korea and Saudi Arabia out of the championship, the ABC Championship is left with 14 teams, thus making the four groupings highly unbalanced.
As a solution, the ABC has called for a redraw of the 14 participants in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on July 12 at 10:30 in the morning. Except for the redraw of the participants, nothing else will be changed, including the tournament format.
Participants
1. China
2. Hong Kong
3. India
4. Japan
5. Korea
6. Kuwait
7. Lebanon
8. Philippines
9. Qatar
10. Chinese Taipei
11. Thailand
12. United Arab Emirates
13. Uzbekistan
14. West Asia II (to be confirmed later this week)