Team USA fell to 0-4 in men’s basketball pool play at the 2024 Paris Olympics with a 20-18 loss to Lithuania followed by a 21-19 loss to Latvia on Thursday. It certainly hasn’t been the showing the Americans were looking for in their first Olympic competition.
The team’s biggest-name player by far is Jimmer Fredette. The former BYU star played six seasons in the NBA but hasn’t been in the league since 2019. Joining him in France are …
Dylan Travis, who played NAIA, junior college and won a Division II national title at Florida Southern before playing overseas in Germany and Australia. His last of five professional seasons was in 2019.Canyon Barry, who started his college career at College of Charleston and finished it at Florida. He has played in Finland, the Czech Republic and, most recently, in the G League for the Iowa Wolves. He’s the son of Basketball Hall of Famer Rick Barry and shoots underhand free throws just like his dad did, too.Kareem Maddox, who played at Princeton and then the Netherlands, Great Britain and Poland. He has not played traditional five-on-five basketball professionally since 2017.
How did this group come together? Well, in order to even be eligible to play for the U.S., you have to play in sanctioned 3×3 events. You earn points for playing (and playing well) in more events, and USA Basketball selects a team from training camp. That’s why these guys haven’t played professional five-on-five basketball recently; they have to be 3×3 players. At this year’s training camp, Fredette, Travis, Barry and Maddox were chosen over a plethora of other names who would be most recognized by only the most die-hard college basketball (and, in some cases, NBA) fans.
The 3×3 game is very fast-paced, as it’s played on half of a court with a 12-second shot clock and continuous action unless there’s a foul, a violation or the ball goes out of bounds. As such, you look for a group with the…
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