The United States men's basketball team is excited to play in Manila for the preliminaries of the FIBA Basketball World Cup from 25 August to 10 September next year.

Team USA director Sean Ford said playing in Manila has a lot of advantages as far as their title campaign in the World Cup is concerned.

During the previous staging of this prestigious tourney in 2019, the Americans stayed in Shanghai for 10 days to play in the group stage.

Then, they took a two-hour flight to Shenzhen to compete in the second round before moving to Dongguan for the final round where they lost to Serbia in the classification phase.

Team USA suffered yet another loss to France in the quarterfinals that sent it to the playoff for seventh place in Beijing, which is three hours away from Dongguan.

"Movements take a lot out of our team," Ford told The Athletic in a report.

"It's a lot to pack all your stuff up and move it and then get into a new routine in the new hotel. And then you have a new room, a new meal room, new elevator, a new bus, a new route to the arena, a new gym, a new locker room, like all that stuff. And so, being in one location is a good thing."

In a statement on Monday, the International Basketball Federation announced that the Americans will play its group stage in Manila while Slovenia will see action in Okinawa and Canada in Jakarta.

Okinawa is around 1,450 kilometers from Manila while Jakarta is 2,735 kilometers, putting the Slovenians and Canadians at a great disadvantage should they qualify for the final round that will be held at the Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan.

The Americans, on the other hand will be playing the preliminaries at either the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City or Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, which means that they will take just a very short bus ride to Philippine Arena for the final round.