[5] Argentina took advantage of the host selection, winning all their games en route to becoming the first FIBA World Champion.

The 1994 FIBA World Championship held in Toronto marked the beginning of a new era, as currently active American NBA players participated in the tournament for the first time (prior to that only European and South American professionals were allowed to participate as they were still classified as amateurs),[6][7] while the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia split into many new states.

FR Yugoslavia, led by Peja Stojaković of the Sacramento Kings and Dejan Bodiroga of FC Barcelona, won the final game against Argentina, while Dirk Nowitzki, who was the tournament's MVP, led Germany to the bronze, its first ever World Championship medal.

Meanwhile, the United States team, this time made up of NBA players, struggled to a sixth-place finish.

The USA, which lost to Greece in a semi-final, won against Argentina in the third-place match and claimed bronze.

The next time around, the United States became the third country to defend the championship, winning against Serbia at the 2014 edition of the tournament.

At the first tournament, FIBA intended for the three Olympic medalists to compete, plus the host Argentina and two teams each from Europe, Asia, and South America.

The former European powerhouse Soviet Union, later made their first tournament appearance in 1959, after missing the first two events.

Later, Asia added a continental championship in 1960, followed by Africa in 1962, Central America in 1965, and Oceania in 1971, As a result of these changes, qualification became more formalized starting with the 1967 tournament.

In that year, the Asian champion received an automatic berth in the tournament, joining the top European and South American teams.

In each of the two tournaments that the wild card system was in place, FIBA selected the maximum three European teams to compete in the event.

FIBA instituted major changes to its competition calendar and the qualifying process for both the World Cup and Olympics in 2017.

The Basketball World Cup has existed in several different formats throughout the years, as it has expanded and contracted between 10 and 24 teams.

The top 2 teams in each of 4 second-round groups then advance to the quarterfinals in the final, single-elimination round.

An updated trophy was introduced for the 1998 FIBA World Championship and the original now sits at the Pedro Ferrándiz Foundation in Spain.

Dr. Naismith's name is engraved on all four sides in Latin, Arabic, Chinese, and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The trophy stands 47 centimeters (18.5 inches) tall and weighs nine kilograms (twenty pounds).

[18] The most recent Naismith Trophy design was revealed in the 2019 FIBA World Cup Qualifiers Draw Ceremonies, last 7 May 2017.

higher than the 1998 version), is made almost entirely out of gold, and features the names of the previous world cup champions at the base.

FIBA's original name (Federation Internationale de Basketball Amateur) is also engraved at the trophy's "hoop".

Finally, a FIBA.com PDF linked from the FIBA.com history section that documents the championships from 1950 to 2002 also has a medal table that included tournaments from 1950 to 1998, which also separated pre-breakup Yugoslavia, called as "Yusgoslavia" [sic] from the post-breakup Yugoslavia, called as "Serbia and Montenegro", and ranked the teams by the number of total medals.

Thirteen players – Ubiratan "Bira" Pereira Maciel, Marcel de Souza, Marcelinho Machado, Anderson Varejão, Leandro Barbosa, Alex Garcia and Marcelo Huertas of Brazil, Phil Smyth of Australia, Daniel Santiago and Jerome Mincy of Puerto Rico, Eduardo Mingas of Angola, Luis Scola of Argentina and Rudy Fernández of Spain – have appeared in five tournaments.

[30][31] Brazilian legend Oscar Schmidt is the runaway all-time leading scorer, scoring 906 career points in four tournaments between 1978 and 1990.

Nikos Galis of Greece is the all-time leading scorer for a single tournament, averaging 33.7 points per game for the Greeks at the 1986 FIBA World Championship.

[32] The 2010 FIBA World Championship reached a global TV audience of close to 1 billion people in nearly 200 countries.

In China, 65 million watched the Chinese national team's game against Greece, in the preliminary round.

The number of tickets sold was 10% higher than 2006, although the revenue was less than 2006's US$18 million, which was widely attributed to the strong Japanese yen.

This was seen as a big improvement from the 2002 tournament, which was a financial loss for USA Basketball and Indianapolis, in which all games were held in one city.

[37] The TV ratings in the United States beat out the 2014 US Tennis Open, but some US sports media still described viewers in the US as not caring about the FIBA Basketball World Cup.

[42] The total attendance for the 2023 tournament was 700,665, including the record-breaking FIBA Basketball World Cup crowd of 38,115 at the Philippine Arena for the game between the co-hosts and the Dominican Republic.