RealGM

Can you imagine Michael Jordan palming a FIBA 3x3 ball?

Weird, Gobert great against high level competition if his team can pass/make some defensive effort.

frica wrote:I always had a feeling that 3x3 FIBA awards smaller players.
Seems like that's true. Average height is slightly under 6'5:



https://fiba3x3.com/docs/fitness-requirements-of-3x3-players.pdf

Looking through the player rankings, most are either guard or SF sized.

It rewards shooting and endurance. Which favors small players. But with 1's and 2's making 2's is paramount to competing and with non-stop action and 12 second shot clocks you need to be in shape.

That big American woman has been dominant, but even with her they have mostly hunted 2's because the structure dictates it. People hate how many 3's are shot now, but if they played 1's and 2's teams would basically only shoot 1's on breakaways or busted coverage dunks. The massive incentive behind the arc dictates it.

I was really surprised to see the 3 on 3 is 1s and 2s. I never question it in pickup because I'm a good outside shooter, but you'd think they'd want to limit the advantage.

imagine the random possibility Cech Repúblic watched fire against usa and beats them

Man the falldown from that woould be insane

?s=19

Texas Chuck wrote:

frica wrote:I always had a feeling that 3x3 FIBA awards smaller players.
Seems like that's true. Average height is slightly under 6'5:



https://fiba3x3.com/docs/fitness-requirements-of-3x3-players.pdf

Looking through the player rankings, most are either guard or SF sized.

It rewards shooting and endurance. Which favors small players. But with 1's and 2's making 2's is paramount to competing and with non-stop action and 12 second shot clocks you need to be in shape.

That big American woman has been dominant, but even with her they have mostly hunted 2's because the structure dictates it. People hate how many 3's are shot now, but if they played 1's and 2's teams would basically only shoot 1's on breakaways or busted coverage dunks. The massive incentive behind the arc dictates it.

I'll have to look at the averages in depth, but when I glanced at games this varies extremely widely.
Sometimes a team attempts pretty much no 2s and still wins, other times it's more like what you'd expect to see in an NBA games and other times more 2s than 1s.

Obviously the talent pool is extremely low currently, so maybe that's why we're not seeing a clear meta.
But I'm not so sure on the supremacy on the 2. The 1 is still a very important shot.

If you can't threaten the paint, you're easy to guard. Since the shotclock is only 12 seconds you can't rely on defenses fumbling (and getting an open shot) either.


The 3x3 Eurocup final had 37% of their attempts from 2.
For comparison the NBA finals of 2021 had 34% shots from 3. 2020 finals had 43% of FGA from the 3pt line.

I'll do a more indepth track later. But I really don't think it's as lopsided as you'd think.
In fact, seems healthy despite the 2pt line being so much shorter than the NBA 3pt.

Edit:
There are a lot of 2pt chuckers. But also a lot of highly ranked players who shoot a very high% of their shots from 1.

https://worldtour.fiba3x3.com/2019/stats/world-tour/players

43.8% of shots were from 2 in 2019, while more than the NBA. Not quite as much as you'd expect.

TOV% was 17%, which is more than the NBA has ever had since they started tracking.

Currently there have been 1204 FGAs during the 3x3 olympics.
482 have been 2point attempts.

So 40%.
Less than 1% difference compared to the NBA last season despite not having fastbreaks and the like for "free" dunks/layups.

Thanks for the data. That surprises me. Back in my 20's I competed in the Hoop It Up 3x3(and this was in the late 90's/early 00's) and all the good teams were spamming 2's relentlessly. I would have expected the same in this. I was mistaken.

Luka GOATcic

You heard it here first.

i would imagine the value of 2's is so high that teams sell out to stop it at the expense of the rim

if nba 3's were worth 4 points i imagine going under screens would die and everyone would go over to funnel shooters to the rim against rim protectors

Colbinii wrote:Luka GOATcic

You heard it here first.

My name begs to differ and suggests I was first

RealGM seems to universally hate the Josh Primo pick, so I'm now confident he will become a great player and multiple All-NBA guy for San Antonio.

as an okc fan i have to hope Josh giddy is actually a taller lamelo

if one lanky heavy passing guy in Australia can be great, why not another?

frica wrote:

Texas Chuck wrote:

frica wrote:I always had a feeling that 3x3 FIBA awards smaller players.
Seems like that's true. Average height is slightly under 6'5:



https://fiba3x3.com/docs/fitness-requirements-of-3x3-players.pdf

Looking through the player rankings, most are either guard or SF sized.

It rewards shooting and endurance. Which favors small players. But with 1's and 2's making 2's is paramount to competing and with non-stop action and 12 second shot clocks you need to be in shape.

That big American woman has been dominant, but even with her they have mostly hunted 2's because the structure dictates it. People hate how many 3's are shot now, but if they played 1's and 2's teams would basically only shoot 1's on breakaways or busted coverage dunks. The massive incentive behind the arc dictates it.

I'll have to look at the averages in depth, but when I glanced at games this varies extremely widely.
Sometimes a team attempts pretty much no 2s and still wins, other times it's more like what you'd expect to see in an NBA games and other times more 2s than 1s.

Obviously the talent pool is extremely low currently, so maybe that's why we're not seeing a clear meta.
But I'm not so sure on the supremacy on the 2. The 1 is still a very important shot.

If you can't threaten the paint, you're easy to guard. Since the shotclock is only 12 seconds you can't rely on defenses fumbling (and getting an open shot) either.


The 3x3 Eurocup final had 37% of their attempts from 2.
For comparison the NBA finals of 2021 had 34% shots from 3. 2020 finals had 43% of FGA from the 3pt line.

I'll do a more indepth track later. But I really don't think it's as lopsided as you'd think.
In fact, seems healthy despite the 2pt line being so much shorter than the NBA 3pt.

Edit:
There are a lot of 2pt chuckers. But also a lot of highly ranked players who shoot a very high% of their shots from 1.

https://worldtour.fiba3x3.com/2019/stats/world-tour/players

43.8% of shots were from 2 in 2019, while more than the NBA. Not quite as much as you'd expect.

TOV% was 17%, which is more than the NBA has ever had since they started tracking.

Finding this discussion very interesting, but I'm going to harp on the skeptical point you mention:

Low talent pool.

Safe to say that the reason Kevin Durant isn't in this event, is probably not because he tried and failed.

I'm a bit frustrated at the existence of the 3x3 event because I just think specifically the best 3x3 talents in the world are 100% not in the event. I frankly think the Olympics shouldn't be approving new events like this.

Of course, I'm also someone who gets frustrated at the gaudy swimming medal totals drastically inflated by having duplicate events with purposefully inferior strokes. Basically, take any Olympic medal that doesn't say "freestyle" next to it, and to my mind, it shouldn't exist. Track & Field doesn't have separate events for skipping, hopping, and galloping, neither should Swimming.

All this to say, I'm perhaps overly opiniated.

Back to what I'd expect in 3x3 if the best players were truly playing:

1. The existence of a 3-point line, along with the profoundly skilled state of modern shooting, likely pushes the game hard in a particular direction. I can't emphasize enough that in an era without confidence in outside shooting, 3x3 might actually lead to the entire game being as brutal and physical as what interior bigs deal with as the refs look the other way. But that's not the era of basketball we're in.

2. So yeah, you'd really, really only be playing players who were serious shooting threats. Really not hard to find 3 guys in a country who are strong 3-point shooters on top of a star's game, so that's what you'd do, and it would mean that you wouldn't be able to have a big just camp in the interior. So I do think we'd expect 3x3 players to be more perimeter-oriented.

3. One thing I think is interesting is that I think it makes forcing switches much harder. It's easier for the defender to move and navigate, and so one kind of dream team would be supe'd up 3 & D guys. I'm imagining 3 wing-sized guys who can all shoot, all play D, and are able to handle the rock and take it to the hole. Say LeBron/AD/Kawhi? Pretty terrifying to think about.

4. Pick & roll could still be used for a variety of reasons, including just as a wedge to give the man with the ball an opening. I'm imagining Steph Curry out there right now. You couldn't double him. You can provide him momentary separation at any time from his man. That means you can get a good Curry 3-point opportunity basically every possession if you want. It's possible that's actually unbeatable.

"Track & Field doesn't have separate events for skipping, hopping, and galloping"

There'd be if they were easy to regulate.

See racewalking, which also features a lot of refs to check the walkers aren't cheating by having both feet airborne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racewalking

Breaststroke and backstroke are classic common swimming strokes in a way we can't say about say running backwards in running, and there is walking in the olympics as kind of an equivalent. Butterfly being an event is dumb though, I haven't seen anyone swimming butterfly outside of the competitions

frica wrote:"Track & Field doesn't have separate events for skipping, hopping, and galloping"

There'd be if they were easy to regulate.

See racewalking, which also features a lot of refs to check the walkers aren't cheating by having both feet airborne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racewalking

I get your point, but my point is that there's no great need in the world for skip/hop/galloping variants on all the 100m/200m/400m/etc stuff, and that makes it a bit strange to look over to swimming and seeing a guy rack up medals by getting really good at a stroke with no actual practical value.

Dr Positivity wrote:Breaststroke and backstroke are classic common swimming strokes in a way we can't say about say running backwards in running, and there is walking in the olympics as kind of an equivalent. Butterfly being an event is dumb though, I haven't seen anyone swimming butterfly outside of the competitions

I can meet you halfway here simply because you called out the butterfly. That's the one that just confused the hell out of me. If you look up its advantages it'll actually say "burns calories", which is another way of saying it's an inefficient stroke that still can't claim to be the fastest.

Doctor MJ wrote:

frica wrote:"Track & Field doesn't have separate events for skipping, hopping, and galloping"

There'd be if they were easy to regulate.

See racewalking, which also features a lot of refs to check the walkers aren't cheating by having both feet airborne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racewalking

I get your point, but my point is that there's no great need in the world for skip/hop/galloping variants on all the 100m/200m/400m/etc stuff, and that makes it a bit strange to look over to swimming and seeing a guy rack up medals by getting really good at a stroke with no actual practical value.

True, swimming is indeed a bit ridiculous.