Want a better three-on-three team from Team USA?
Encourage more NBA players, past and present, to participate in FIBA 3×3 competitions.
The U.S. team was soundly defeated 22-14 by reigning bronze medalist Serbia to open its group stage at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Tuesday.
The main takeaway was the talent gap between USA Basketball’s five-on-five roster, which is led by future basketball Hall of Famers LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, and Team USA’s obscure 3×3 roster led by BYU has-been Jimmer Fredette.
The drop in talent, however, is due to FIBA’s rules that determine roster construction in the Olympic 3×3 competition, which is now in its second round of games after its inception at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
After all, no active NBA player met the criteria to join Team USA’s men’s 3×3 team at this Olympics.
This is because three-on-three teams are made up of four players:
- Two of these players must be ranked among the top 10 in their country’s FIBA 3×3 competitions
- The other two players must be ranked in the top 50 or have the minimum number of ranking points, which are earned by participating in FIBA-sanctioned 3×3 tournaments leading up to the Olympic Games.
Ironically, Fredette leads the world rankings with just under 992,000 individual points. Serbia is home to players ranked second (Strahinja Stojacic), fourth (Dejan Majstorovic) and fifth (Stefan Milivojevic), while Team USA’s Canyon Barry is ranked sixth, Kareem Maddox is ranked eleventh and Dylan Travis is ranked sixteenth.
Fredette, you’ll recall, was taken 10th overall in the 2011 NBA Draft after winning college basketball player of the year honors as a senior at BYU before it became clear that his game as a small-framed, defensive-turning guard didn’t translate to the professional level. He spent three years with the Sacramento Kings, then bounced around — eight games in Chicago, 54 in New Orleans, a cup of coffee at Madison Square Garden, then one last hurrah in Phoenix — before his career ended in 2019.
Maddox worked as an audio producer after ending his five-on-five career early before throwing himself into three-on-three. Barry is a full-time scientist, a systems engineer for a defense contractor. And Travis led Nebraska in scoring as a high school senior but emerged without a single Division I scholarship offer. He’s a special education teacher and plays basketball on the side.
Many other countries, including Serbia, send representatives who have the luxury of playing basketball all year round.
This is also why the men’s 3×3 team should take a cue from the women’s three-man team: the women’s 3×3 team is positioning itself to compete for gold in the long term.
Cameron Brink was a decorated college basketball player at Stanford who helped Team USA win FIBA gold after her senior year last summer. She was set to represent USA Basketball at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but an ACL injury made her ineligible. The 3×3 committee replaced Brink with Dearica Hamby, a WNBA champion and three-time All-Star who is averaging 19 points and 10 rebounds for the Los Angeles Sparks. Hamby played 3×3 for the first time in December to help Team USA win gold at the 2023 FIBA AmeriCup.
Rhyne Howard won the FIBA AmeriCup MVP as a senior, then went on to be the WNBA Rookie of the Year and make two All-Star games. Hailey Van Lith is a college basketball star at TCU who has already won two gold medals.
The women’s 3×3 team lost to Germany in the opening game of group play, 17-13, but the path to gold is clear given the influx of talent in the WNBA and players eligible to compete on the Olympic roster.
The same can’t be said for the men, and until USA Basketball markets the 3×3 game to its next generation of basketball stars, Team USA’s three-on-three lineup will remain stuck in the past, relying on part-time players who don’t pass the eye test to protect the American basketball throne and bring home the gold.
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