Last Chance for Men's Basketball Teams to Go to London While the United States men's Olympic basketball team worries about replacing Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, a dozen other teams have a more pressing concern: qualifying for the Games in the first place. Nine teams are already in the Olympic tournament, but there are three spots left. Starting Monday in Venezuela, 12 teams will vie for those places. The favorite is probably Greece, which is ranked fourth in the world, behind the already qualified United States, Spain and Argentina. The team includes forward Kostas Papanikolaou, whom the Knicks took in the second round of the N.B.A. draft last week, and guard Vasileios Spanoulis, who once had a cup of coffee with the Houston Rockets. The American-born-raised-and-educated center Kosta Koufos, who has played for Ohio State, the Jazz, the Timberwolves and now the Nuggets, is out with an injury but could be ready for the Games. The three other European teams in the qualifiers look formidable. Russia, the European champion in 2007, includes a former Trail Blazers first-round pick, Sergey Monya, and Lithuania includes two Toronto Raptors, Linas Kleiza and Jonas Valanciunas. Macedonia is led by point guard Bo McCalebb, an African-American from New Orleans who became a naturalized Macedonian and led all scorers in the 2011 European Championships. It's hard to look too far past the European teams: four years ago all three spots went to Europeans, and in the recent women's qualifier, all four European entrants made the Games. Europe is so deep that Turkey and Serbia, 2010 world championship semifinalists, did not even make the field for this qualifier. But there are a few other teams who could sneak into a spot. Puerto Rico includes forward Renaldo Balkman, a Staten Island native who had two spells with the Knicks, and is now a free agent, and guard Carlos Arroyo, who had a nearly 10-year N.B.A. career. The longtime Atlanta Hawk Al Horford leads the Dominican Republic. Also in with a longshot chance are host Venezuela and Angola, which finished second in the African Championships. The field is rounded out by Jordan, Nigeria, South Korea and New Zealand. The pressure will be intense. The teams play just two preliminary games, to narrow the field to eight. Then come must-win quarterfinals. With only three spots available, teams must then win a semifinal, or failing that, the third-place game, to go to London. They will not even bother playing a final, since both semifinal winners qualify. Don't think that the teams coming out of this qualifier have no chance in the Games. Four years ago, two qualifiers made the quarterfinals, and one of them, Greece, came 2 points short of the semis.