On 26 February 2021, Basketball New Zealand announced that they would pull out of the tournament.

[4][5] Senegal had been initially included in the Belgrade Tournament, but it has been forced to withdraw before the start due to several COVID-19 positive cases, and not being replaced by any team, lowering the number of participants to 5.

On 28 June, they informed FIBA about COVID-19 related disruptions to their preparations in Germany.

Afterwards, their scheduled games with Puerto Rico and Italy did not take place.

In fact, FIBA did not considered Senegal as a participant and did not applied the Rule 20.2.1, which could have awarded Senegal's opponents the game with score as 20 to 0 (Article 20 discusses the games lost by forfeit).