(NEXSTAR) – If you hung on through Thursday night’s rain delay in Paris, you may have watched a late lead slip away from the U.S. Men’s 3×3 team against Latvia, dropping the team to an 0-4 start at the Olympics in Paris. The early struggles left some wondering why there aren’t bigger names representing the United States in a game we invented?
As with any Olympic sport, the qualification process is strenuous, and you can’t just tap Jaylen Brown on the shoulder the day after the NBA Finals and ask him to start playing a half-court game.
The International Basketball Federation, known as FIBA, has rules about how teams are formed. Players are required to accumulate ranking points by participating in FIBA-approved 3×3 competitions. The final team must include two of the top 10 Americans, and the other two must also be in the top 100, according to NBC Sports, which reported before the games that USA Basketball preferred picking teammates who had been playing together rather than mixing and matching talent.
Effectively, an NBA star would need to spend the offseason building up 3×3 points to qualify for the Olympic squad and hope USA Basketball opted to add him to the roster over full-time 3×3 players.
In the end, officials opted to pick an existing team. Jimmer Fredette, Canyon Barry, Kareem Maddox and Dylan Travis have been playing together for years, winning gold at the Pan American Games and finishing second to Serbia at the World Cup.
The thinking was that the camaraderie and chemistry would help rectify the brutal disappointment the team felt after missing the Olympics entirely the last time around. Over the first four games, that hope seemed dashed, as Fredette, the player with the most NBA experience, was injured and the team struggled to close out games. Things turned around Friday with a 21-19 win over France, followed by a victory over last-place China.
“I think obviously 2020 was tough, and many Olympic athletes — and athletes in general — know that struggle of setting a goal and trying to achieve something, and coming up short,” Barry, the son of Hall of Famer Rick Barry said before the games.
The wins on Friday vaulted the Americans back among the top six teams in the tournament, giving them a shot at advancing past pool play. A win over the Dutch team on Saturday should propel them to the knockout round, and erase the disappointment of their early losing streak.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
