The International Basketball Federation (FIBA) announced on Monday how the 24 teams attending men's Olympic Qualifying Tournaments in June 2020 will compete for the four remaining available spots in Tokyo.

There will be two groups, Group A and Group B in each of the four tournament's host cities — Belgrade (Serbia), Kaunas (Lithuania), Split (Croatia) and Victoria (Canada) — and each group will contain three teams.

The teams have already been divided into six pots. Teams from Pot 1, Pot 4 and Pot 5 will go to Group A; the rest will go to Group B. The top two teams of each group will participate in the following knockout games and only the final winning team of each region will qualify for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

China, in Pot 5, is theoretically hopeful of making the 2020 Tokyo Games. If the group division is relatively easy, the team's chances will be slightly greater. Of the four teams in Pot 1, Serbia, Greece and Lithuania will have no problem crashing China on the court. By contrast Russia, who has suffered from a shortage of young talent in recent years, may be the best opponents China can hope for.

Germany, Canada, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela are in Pot 4. Germany and Canada will have no problem beating China. But the Dominican Republic, judging by their performance at the FIBA Basketball World Cup in 2019, are an unstable team. They achieved a surprise victory in their first game by defeating Germany, but also almost lost to Jordan.

Venezuela should be the best opponents for China in this pot. A 72-59 loss to Venezuela cost China the early Olympic qualification. If they can play Venezuela again, Chinese players won't need extra motivation to try their best efforts.

Of course, the chances of China being in the same group as Russia and Venezuela are quite small, not to mention that the knockout games will be even more fierce. The Chinese side should focus on improving itself before betting on its luck of group division.