Chicago Bulls: FIBA European Championships

Last summer, Derrick Rose helped Team USA win the World Championships and clinch a spot in the 2012 Olympics, which will be held in London.

This summer, a few of his teammates were trying to help their respective countries clinch a spot in the games. For those who played and how each did, just read on.

I will give you a few hints—a backup played just as well as one of our starters, someone got a taste of carrying the load and one player was very close to winning the European tournament.

Omer Asik

Omer Asik was playing for his homeland of Turkey, which went 3-4 during the tournament.

Omer actually got a chance to face off against both of his teammates, as Turkey beat Luol Deng and Great Britain while losing to Team France and Joakim Noah.

Omer led Turkey is both rebounds and blocks per game with 8.5 boards and 1.5 rejections.

He also was chipping in nine points a night.

Asik was part of (surprisingly) five NBA players to suit up for Turkey including Hedo Turkoglu, Enes Kanter, Ersan Ilyasova and Semih Erden. Those are a lot of big boys.

Luol Deng

Luol Deng was playing for Great Britain, which will be hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Deng was the only NBA player on the roster.

Great Britain went 2-3, getting victories over Poland and Portugal.

Deng led the team in every category.

He led in points, rebounds, assists, steals and was tied with another player with three blocks. He has twice as many points and assists as the next player on the team.

He finished with 24.6 points, 3.6 assists and 9.4 rebounds per game.

If he could average that on this side of the pond, every Bulls fan would be very happy.

Joakim Noah

Joakim Noah was basically playing for an NBA team with Team France.

They had seven NBA players, including Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, Nicholas Batum, Ronny Turiaf, Kevin Seraphin and Ian Mahinmi.

Team France made it all the way to the championship game but lost to Spain 98-85.

Their only two loses of the whole tournament came at the hands of Spain, which sported six NBA players. The one game Noah missed was the first matchup between Spain and France.

Noah played in 10 of the 11 games, averaging nine points and eight rebounds in 25 minutes of action. He led the team in rebounding.