Basketball was one of the 42 sports at the 16th Asian Games 2010 at Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.

China defeated Korea in both of the tournament's gold medal games; Iran won the men's bronze medal defeating Japan, and Japan defeated Chinese Taipei to win the bronze medal in the women's tournament.

The teams were seeded based on their final ranking at the 2006 Asian Games.

* The Philippines, which has made it to the latter stages of every Asian Games basketball tournament from 1951 to 2002, was originally drawn with Saudi Arabia but Saudi Arabia withdrew.

Kuwait, which was originally drawn with Hong Kong and North Korea, was re-drawn with the Philippines to balance the number of teams in each group.