Being humiliated by Belgium and the Netherlands, when you are the United States, is no big deal. Well, especially in football. In basketball, on the other hand, the affront is immense. The heretics should have lost their nationality, stopped playing the sport forever, or even been sent to oil platforms off the coast of Alaska to be forgotten. Defeated in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Vienna (Austria), the Americans did not qualify for the 3×3 basketball tournament in Tokyo. Shock.
Because, yes, in 3×3 basketball, the Americans are not as formidable and impressive as their cousins in 5×5, who come to Paris to trample the competition and show that America dominates the world. But if seeing LeBron James, Kevin Durant and company enter the court can make you waver, standing in front of the lambs Jimmer Fredette and his guys you actually touch one without moving the other. “No team scares me, we are capable of beating everyone,” confirms Hugo Suhard, member of the French team, ultimately not selected for the Olympics.
“Not as popular as in Europe”
So why aren’t the United States of 3×3 as scary? The special format of the discipline is a first answer: a 10-minute match or the first to 21. All it takes is for one team to have the match of its life and the other to be behind for the gaps to quickly become impossible to catch up. And the guillotine quickly falls. But, above all, the Americans have long put aside, even denigrated, 3×3.
“We don’t have many people playing,” lamented international Robbie Hummel, on Westwood One Sportsafter the Austrian explosion. It’s not as popular as in Eastern Europe or even Asia. In my entire 3×3 career, we’ve only played in North America twice, there are huge barriers to playing games in Europe, it’s not easy to go there.”
It’s not about being concerned about the carbon footprint or being lazy to travel to these old-world muggles, but just about interest and even mentality. “It’s clear that between 5×5 and 3×3, the mentality is different,” explains American Marcedes Walker Oladipo, a naturalized Azerbaijani. Basketball in America is 5 on 5 all the time, everywhere, or 1×1. For 3×3, you need to know different techniques to play, whether it’s passing, positioning, etc.”
No NBA players in Paris
The spanking of 2021 has moved things forward a little for the men. As for France with Paris, a private 3×3 team, Miami, was created and is competing in some stages of the Fiba circuit. The four players present in Paris are playing there: Canyon Barry, Jimmer Fredette, Dylan Travis and Kareem Maddox, the only survivor from Vienna. No NBA stars detached for the occasion, but real players who have specialized in 3×3 and have been working on automatisms for several months.
” Now, 3×3 is really considered in the United States, confirms French international Timothé Vergiat. You improve a lot by practicing, and it doesn’t come like that. We really see the difference. The fact of touring on the circuit, it really brings a lot of experience, it brings stability. »
If the Serbs are the big names in the competition, the United States are coming to Paris to fight it out. And to imitate, in this way, the women’s team, crowned in Tokyo in 2021 and reigning world champion, who now allow themselves to roll their shoulders, like any good American who respects themselves. “It’s cultural for them,” says Frenchwoman Marie-Ève Paget. “It’s not a bad thing if they think they’re the best and they have the right to think so, because they’re great players. They were built that way and it won’t change. Whether they play 3×3 or 5×5, for them, they’re the best.”
“They are not unbeatable”
But, despite the title in Japan, the Americans and their natural confidence have also changed their approach to 3×3. While in Tokyo the team was composed solely of WNBA players, in Paris, the majority of Team USA specializes in 3×3. All the more reason to be afraid for our tricolors, who were beaten in the semi-finals of the 2021 Olympics? Not at all.
“They are still there, anyway, in the big competitions, but they are not unbeatable and they do not have a supremacy like they can have in the 5×5, continues Paget. Afterwards, from the moment we talk about the Olympics, the Americans always take things seriously.”