page_title: Finland men's national basketball team
section_title: 1950s
hierarchical_section_title: Finland men's national basketball team / History / 1950s
caption_attribution_description: English: Basketball player Gerald Lee Jr. playing for Finland against Montenegro at Energia Areena in Vantaa, Finland. Montenegro won the game.
context_page_description: The Finland national basketball team represents Finland in international basketball competition. The team is governed by Basketball Finland.
  Finland has played in 16 EuroBasket tournaments, with their best finish coming in sixth place at EuroBasket 1967 on home soil. The national team also has reached the Summer Olympics twice, in 1952 as the host, and 1964. In 2014 Finland qualified for their first ever appearance to the FIBA World Cup.
  Since 2011, Finland has had the highest FIBA World Ranking among Nordic countries.
context_section_description: Finland's next European competition was 12 years later, at the EuroBasket 1951 in Paris.  Overall, they fared much better and split their four preliminary round games and finished at third place in the group at 2–2 but were eliminated from championship contention.  They had success after that, winning all three of their classification round 1 games and both round 2 games to finish in 9th place of the 18 teams.
  In 1952, by virtue of hosting the games in Helsinki, Finland played at the Summer Olympics for the first time. The national team finished at the bottom of Group B in the preliminary round losing all of its game to the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Mexico, and failing to advance.
  Finland used this international experience when they competed again at the EuroBasket 1953 in Moscow.  In the preliminary round, they finished with 1 win and 3 losses for 4th place of the 5 teams in the group.  They fared significantly better in the first classification round, winning 3 and losing only 1 to finish in the middle of a three-way tie in the group.  They lost both the 9–12 and 11/12 classification games, however, taking 12th place of 17 overall.
  At the next event, Finland had some difficulty in the preliminary round of EuroBasket 1955.  They lost all three early games in Budapest and were relegated to the classification round.  Once again, not faced with the world elite opponents anymore, the Fins shone in the classification round and won all four of the pool play games.  They won their classification 9–12 match as well, but lost to France in the 9/10 final to finish 10th of 18 in the tournament.
  In Sofia, at the EuroBasket 1957, the Finns finished third in their preliminary group after going 1–2.  They moved to the 9–16 classification pool and won five games there with only one loss. They took 11th place overall in the tournament.
caption: Gerald Lee Jr. in 2010
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