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Why is Team USA bad at 3×3 basketball?

Why is Team USA bad at 3×3 basketball?

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Home to basketball’s top professional league and home to the vast majority of its most famous players, the United States is unquestionably a basketball nation.

On the international stage, the Americans have been dominant, winning the men’s gold medal in 16 of the 19 Olympics they have participated in and the women’s gold medal in nine of the last 10. Team USA has not lost an Olympic women’s basketball game since 1992.

So overwhelming is this global dominance that winning a gold medal is greeted with a shrug by most at home. It has become an expectation rather than an achievement, while finishing anywhere else in the competition creates panic and pressure for wholesale changes.

MANDATORY READING: Follow USA TODAY’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics

Team USA’s history in Olympic triple-head basketball is not so bright.

Unlike its more traditional five-on-five counterpart, three-on-three basketball (often shortened to 3×3) has been a tougher challenge for the Americans, especially on the men’s side, since it made its debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. While the women won gold in Tokyo and advanced to the semifinals of the 2024 Paris Olympics, losing to Spain in overtime on Monday, the men were ineffective in the sport, failing to qualify for the 2020 Games and finishing with a 2-5 record in Paris this year, making them one of only two countries not to qualify for the six-team knockout stage.

Why is it that a country that invented the sport and has been internationally successful for most of its history is struggling in one of its most popular branches?

Here are some of the obstacles Americans face in 3×3 basketball and what can be done to overcome them:

2024 PARIS OLYMPICS: Meet the members of Team USA competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics

Why is Team USA bad at 3×3 basketball?

While just getting there was an improvement from three years ago, the 2024 Paris Olympics were an experience to remember for the Team USA men’s 3×3 basketball squad.

The Americans lost five of their seven games and lost 21-6 to the Netherlands, ending their hopes of advancing to the knockout stage.

The performance raises some natural and understandable questions: Why isn’t the U.S. better at this?

Some of this can be attributed to the difference in games. Unlike five-on-five basketball, 3×3 basketball uses only a half-court with a single basket, has a 12-second shot clock, a slightly smaller ball, smaller rosters, and is generally a much shorter, faster-paced sport, with the game ending after 10 minutes or when one team reaches 21 points, whichever comes first.

“We only play for 10 minutes, so if you look at the first quarter of 5-on-5 games, they’re very, very close,” Hailey Van Lith, a guard at TCU who plays on the U.S. women’s 3×3 team, told ESPN. “And sometimes even the U.S. is behind. So it’s a game of who’s in shape. If our shooters aren’t shooting and the other team is, no matter how good we are, we’re probably going to lose.”

While these differences are notable, there is enough crossover between the two that the contrasts shouldn’t be too striking. After all, the 3×3 game grew out of pick-up basketball, the kind that any top American player grew up playing in some form.

Part of the Americans’ shortcomings in men’s 3×3 stems from the rules that dictate how the sport operates.

FIBA, the governing body of international basketball, requires each team’s four-man roster to consist of two players ranked in the top 10 in their country and two players ranked in the top 50 in their country or have a minimum ranking score. Players achieve these rankings and earn these points based on a points system that takes into account how often players compete in sanctioned 3×3 events and how they perform. Big3, a professional 3×3 league founded by rapper and actor Ice Cube and featuring former NBA players such as Joe Johnson, Jeff Teague, Michael Beasley and Paul Millsap, does not fall under this FIBA-sanctioned umbrella.

For FIBA, it’s a way to level the playing field in what is a relatively new sport, rather than another demonstration of American superiority.

But the nature of the sport makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the U.S. to field its best players for the Olympics. The 3×3 tournament schedule overlaps with the NBA season, meaning it’s not easy to pick stars like Kyrie Irving, Jaylen Brown, and Paul George who didn’t make the five-five American roster and put them in 3×3 competition. Given FIBA’s parameters, a player must effectively commit to the 3×3 game or devote some of their valuable free time to pursuing a 3×3 career on the side.

“I think when we look at other countries, we all have a hard time finding athletes who are willing to commit to the sport and play … when the WNBA and professional seasons in Europe are over,” Ron Yeung, head of domestic development at Canada Basketball, told ESPN. “For Canada, the success of that team has shone a light on the sport. Now we’re seeing athletes say, ‘Hey, we want to try this, can we come to camp and try it out?’ Athletes are now choosing 3-on-3 as a path for athletes and it gives them options and it also gives us the ability to grow the sport.”

MANDATORY READING: Why a 3×3 basketball half court? Rules, court dimensions, game length and more for the 2024 Paris Olympics

Team USA 3×3 basketball roster

With Team USA entering the 2024 Paris Olympics ranked second behind Serbia in the FIBA ​​men’s rankings after finishing second at the 2023 FIBA ​​3×3 World Cup, the Americans’ roster was largely missing names that many U.S. basketball fans would recognize.

Here is the four-person squad:

  • Jimmer Fredette
  • Barry Canyon
  • Dylan Travis
  • Kareem Maddox

Fredette is the standout on the roster, a former national college player of the year at BYU who played six seasons in the NBA. The other three had solid college careers but none made the NBA. Barry, the son of Basketball Hall of Famer Rick Barry, averaged 11.4 points per game in his final season at Florida. Maddox was the leading scorer on a Princeton team that made the NCAA tournament in 2011. Travis played his final two seasons at Florida Southern, a Division II program.

The foursome were formidable together. They were four of the five members of Team Miami, the top-ranked team on the FIBA ​​professional world tour.

But they stumbled once they arrived in Paris, losing one-sided games to the Netherlands and Serbia, and losing to Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. These woes were at least in part due to an injury to Fredette, the world’s best 3×3 player, that he suffered in the defeat against Poland, which forced him to miss his team’s final five games. Olympic 3×3 rosters are limited to four players, meaning the Americans have no substitutes to replace Fredette.

How can Team USA get better at 3×3 basketball?

There is an incentive for the U.S. to avoid its disastrous performance in Paris. The 2028 Olympics will be on home soil in Los Angeles, which would make a repeat performance even more unpleasant.

How this will be achieved remains an unanswered question.

Fielding a better team with higher-level players will require structural changes and the alignment of several moving parts, some of which may not align very well.

NBA teams could allow less-used players to take time off to compete in FIBA-sanctioned events, but the risk of injury for even someone near the end of the bench could make that a starting point. Hope for such an approach could be found on the women’s side, as the gold-medal-winning 2020 U.S. team featured four active WNBA players, including Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young, both of whom are on the five-on-five national team at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Despite their setback in the semifinals, the 2024 U.S. women’s 3×3 team featured two active WNBA players and one former player.

Van Lith’s inclusion on the women’s team suggests that top-tier college players can make it to the Olympics in 3×3 basketball. But the former Louisville and LSU player took the initiative to compete in 25 different 3×3 events to make her Olympic dreams a reality — a sacrifice not every player is willing to make.

However, Team USA for the 2028 Games could theoretically include some of the best players from the men’s college level, but the schools or NBA teams that just drafted it could adjust. As CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander points out, the NIL opportunities for college players participating in the Olympics for 3×3 basketball could be huge.

But for now, the US will have to deal with the disappointment of 2024, hope for a solution in 2028, and work towards it.