| Continent: | South America |
| Year: | 1953 |
| Host: | Uruguay |
| Dates: | April 4–19 |
| Teams: | 7 |
| Venues: | 1 |
| Cities: | 1 |
| Champions: | Uruguay |
| Title Number: | 6 |
| Prevseason: | 1949 |
| Nextseason: | 1955 |
The 1953 South American Basketball Championship was the 15th edition of this regional tournament. It was held in Montevideo, Uruguay and won by the host, Uruguay national basketball team. A record seven national teams competed. It was the first to follow the first World Championship in 1950.
Each team played the other six teams once, for a total of six games played by each team and 21 overall in the preliminary round. The three-way tie between Chile, Peru, and Paraguay was broken by a sub-bracket; each was 1–1 against the other teams in that sub-bracket. The point differentials within the bracket gave Chile the top spot in it with +5, Paraguay had +4, and Peru had -9. This was mostly due to Chile's relatively large victory over Peru while the other two games (Peru-Paraguay and Chile-Paraguay) had both been much closer.
| width=20 | Rank | width=220 | Team | width=20 | Pts | width=20 | W | width=20 | L | width=20 | PF | width=20 | PA | width=20 | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 | 6 | 0 | 309 | 200 | +109 | |||||||||
| 2 | 11 | 5 | 1 | 274 | 222 | +52 | |||||||||
| 3 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 269 | 282 | -13 | |||||||||
| 4 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 287 | 284 | +3 | |||||||||
| 5 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 235 | 237 | -2 | |||||||||
| 6 | 7 | 1 | 5 | 259 | 310 | -51 | |||||||||
| 7 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 241 | 339 | -98 |
| width=25% | width=25% | width=25% | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uruguay | 48 - 32 | Brazil | |||
| Uruguay | 52 - 36 | Chile | |||
| Uruguay | 62 - 45 | Paraguay | |||
| Uruguay | 22 - 20 | Peru | |||
| Uruguay | 58 - 34 | Ecuador | |||
| Uruguay | 67 - 33 | Colombia | |||
| Brazil | 51 - 40 | Chile | |||
| Brazil | 40 - 37 | Paraguay | |||
| Brazil | 31 - 15 | Peru | |||
| Brazil | 51 - 37 | Ecuador | |||
| Brazil | 69 - 45 | Colombia | |||
| Chile | 40 - 46 | Paraguay | |||
| Chile | 56 - 45 | Peru | |||
| Chile | 52 - 47 | Ecuador | |||
| Chile | 45 - 41 | Colombia | |||
| Paraguay | 51 - 53 | Peru | |||
| Paraguay | 57 - 43 | Ecuador | |||
| Paraguay | 51 - 46 | Colombia | |||
| Peru | 50 - 43 | Ecuador | |||
| Peru | 52 - 34 | Colombia | |||
| Ecuador | 55 - 42 | Colombia |