The United States men's and women's 3x3 teams had disappointing trips to Paris by American basketball standards. The men's team, led by Canyon Barry, went 2–5 in pool play while the women's team lost in the semifinals and were relegated to the bronze medal game against Canada.
Brian Windhorst joined The Pat McAfee Show on Monday and was greeted by a studio full of Americans who wanted to know why Team USA doesn't just take some of the best remaining NBA players and send them to play in the halfcourt tournament. According to Windhorst, it's because that's not what FIBA wants.
"FIBA doesn't really want the USA to do good at three on three basketball" ~ @WindhorstESPN
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"You want real talk about it, I'll tell you why," said Windhorst. "Because they don't, FIBA doesn't really want the US to do good at three on three. They really want that to be for countries that can't field five on five teams. And so they do all these things, like they have all these different layers and layers and layers of things that you have to do to qualify. I don't just mean the team. I'm talking about like ... Kyrie Irving can't just show up and play. The only way you can play is if you like play in like 15 qualifying events. It's not 15, I'm just coming up with that number."
Windhorst also mentioned that's why Caitlin Clark wasn't playing on the women's 3x3 team. If she even wanted to in the first place.
"That was something Caitlin Clark could have done," Windhorst continued. "Now she may not have wanted to do it, but if Caitlin Clark played can you imagine what that would have been like? But there were like 15 hoops she had to jump through. Because FIBA doesn't care about ratings. They just care about you know like growing the game elsewhere outside the US so that's not their priority."
Nor should it be. However, this does beg some questions about the Olympics. Are these games not meant to determine who the best is at every sport? Are we really just adding sports designed to put Americans at a disadvantage?
On the other hand, why does America need to be the best at everything? Sometimes it seems like we don't even completely care about the events we do win.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Brian Windhorst Bluntly Says FIBA Doesn’t Want U.S. to Be Good at 3x3 Basketball.
