The Summer Olympics will incorporate 3×3 basketball for the second time in 2024, and if you’re watching the competition in Paris and do a double-take when you see Team USA, don’t be alarmed.
Yes, that’s Jimmer Fredette playing 3×3 in the Olympics — the former BYU star and NBA lottery pick is part of Team USA in its first time competing in men’s 3×3 after failing to qualify in 2020. Team USA won the gold medal in women’s 3×3 in 2020 with a team that featured WNBA star Kelsey Plum.
Fredette went on The Ringer podcast “The Ryen Russillo Show” on July 9 to discuss his how he ended up playing 3×3 after spending seven months away from his wife and children while playing pro basketball in China during the pandemic.
“So I came back and was like, ‘I can’t do that again,’ ” Fredette told Russillo. “I don’t wanna go back over to China and play. I just wanna be with the kids. And so I took some time off.”
That’s when USA Basketball approached Fredette about the possibility of playing 3×3.
“(They said) we want you to come and help us qualify for the Olympics in 2024, and as soon as I heard Olympics I was intrigued, right?” Fredette said. “I was like, man, what an opportunity that could be.”
Fredette: College Phenom to NBA Lottery Pick
Few college basketball players captured the public’s imagination like Fredette did in the last few decades during his time at BYU, where he was a two-time All-American and the unanimous National Player of the Year in 2011 after he led the NCAA in scoring at 28.9 points per game.
Fredette was a lottery pick in the 2011 NBA draft, going No. 10 overall to the Milwaukee Bucks before being traded to the Sacramento Kings. Fredette only started 7 games over three seasons for the Kings and never averaged more than 8.0 points.
Fredette played for four teams in his first five seasons in the NBA and since 2016 bounced back and forth between the NBA and stints in the Chinese Basketball Association with the Shanghai Sharks and in EuroLeague with Greek club Panathinaikos, last playing in the NBA with the Phoenix Suns in 2019.
Who Is Team to Beat in 3×3 at 2024 Olympics?
Fredette, who is 35 years old, picked a 3×3 team with current NBA players at Russillo’s request — Boston Celtics guard Jrue Holiday, Celtics forward Jayson Tatum, Suns forward Kevin Durant and Philadelphia 76ers forward Paul George.
Team USA will face an uphill battle to win a gold medal in 2024. Latvia won the gold medal at the 2020 Olympics and Serbia is the reigning FIBA 3×3 World Cup champion, where they defeated Team USA in the finals.
That team that finished as runner-up at the 2023 World Cup is the same that’s headed to the Olympics — Fredette, Kareem Maddox, Dylan Travis and Canyon Barry.
Maddox, 6-foot-8, was the 2011 Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year at Princeton and was part of the 2019 and 2023 gold medal 3×3 teams at the Pan Am Games. Travis won an NCAA Division II national championship at Florida Southern in 2015.
Barry, the son of Basketball Hall of Famer and NBA legend Rick Barry, was the SEC Sixth Man of the Year at Florida in 2017 and played four seasons in the NBA G League.
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Former NBA Lottery Pick Leads Team USA 3×3 Squad