The United States should not waste its resources on 3×3 basketball. The “sport” is not worth it

PARIS — Here we are in the middle of the Place de la Condorde, face to face with Cierra Burdick, the newly crowned bronze medalist for the U.S. women’s 3×3 basketball team.

I feel a little bad for her, because the question everyone really wants to ask isn’t the kind of thing you ask an athlete after what’s supposed to be one of the biggest moments of their life. So instead, everyone just nibbles at the edges: What do you want to see from 3×3 in the future? How can it grow in America? How can we maintain our momentum?

In the meantime, what we want to say is quite obvious: WHY THE HELL ISN’T TEAM AMERICAN WINNING GOLD MEDALS IN THIS SPORT?

We invented basketball. Name the form: 5×5, 3×3, Streetball, Slamball, HORSE. Whatever. We have the deepest talent pool in the world to draw from. We are supposed to win. We don’t celebrate bronze medals here, and if this was a sport USA Basketball took seriously, everyone who was part of the 2-5 man performance in Paris (after not even qualifying for Tokyo) would be fired.

“It’s obviously not the medal we wanted,” Burdick said. “But I don’t want to ruin this moment. I want to be grateful to be here.”

MORE:3×3 Basketball at the Olympics is a Disaster. How to Fix It Before the Next Games.

That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about where the United States stands in the 3×3, and the people in charge are going to spend the next four years going to Los Angeles trying to figure out how to fix it, because God knows our country can’t stand that kind of embarrassment on its own soil.

There will be lamentations. There will be smart people making very serious suggestions about what we can do to keep our guys from losing to Latvia and Poland like they did here. There will be more tournaments, more 3×3 camps, more pressure on NBA players and the best players in the WNBA to step up.

And I’m here to tell you something after seeing it up close in Paris: the effort is not worth it.

Because this sport stinks.

Sorry to spoil the party, but it’s true. And deep down, you know it, too. If you really love basketball for its strategy, artistry, and end-to-end athleticism… well, this isn’t it. It’ll never be it.

It’s what pickleball is to tennis. It’s a fake Rolex you can buy for twenty dollars in Times Square. It’s what Stars & Stripes Cola is to Coca-Cola.

It’s not for me.

“I would definitely like to see it grow,” Burdick said. “I would like to see 3×3 camps for young people. We’re starting a professional women’s 3×3 league in the United States, and I want to continue to push that forward and see it grow and hopefully get more young girls and boys into the game.”

That’s when I jumped into the conversation. In my head, I’m thinking: You wish there was a WHAT? You launch a WHAT? You want more young girls and boys to play WHAT?

But what I asked was more delicate, more like: Doesn’t all this point towards a specialization in 3×3 just so the Americans can chase gold medals once every four years?

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I’m a perfect example of not having to specialize. I come to Europe and play 5×5 for eight months of the year, then I come home and play 3×3 for my country. So I have the best of both worlds in my opinion. I think if you can play 3×3, you can play 5×5.”

Let’s hope so, because the one thing American basketball absolutely does not need is a bifurcation of the game where people grow up thinking this shoddy product is more than it is.

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It would be one thing if 3×3 looked and played like real basketball. Instead, there are a lot of fouls (and way too many rewards for fouls) and a lot of bad shots taken at the end of the 12-second shot clock. And since the game only lasts 10 minutes, it’s going to be pretty random by nature.

There has been a lot of talk in the US this week about why you can’t convince low-level NBA players or even top G-League players, who will never see an Olympic team, to commit to playing 3×3. Just watch a game where players are holding on to each other as they run randomly across half of a real basketball court and you’ll understand pretty quickly.

Which brings us to a larger question. If the Olympics are the pinnacle of international sport, and basketball is already an international sport that showcases the best players in the world, why have a lesser version of it? If 3×3 can’t attract players who would be considered among the hundreds of best in the world in their chosen sport, what’s the point of including it in the Olympics?

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