The team they send to 3X3 tournaments is a bit of an embarrassment and shows we're not taking it in any way seriously. Daniel Johnson easily the best player in a team featuring two hasbeens an an NPC. There isn't a world where Australia should be beaten in basketball by the England. We're just leagues ahead of where they are in the sport. No disrespect actually meant to the guys who put the colours on but if Basketball Australia takes the 3X3 phenomena even vaguely seriously they need to dig a bit deeper.

I'll admit that I don't watch much 3x3 or even find it particularly interesting, but would "NBL" level ability necessarily be a must? Feels closer to street ball, I can imagine there would be a lot of guys outside the NBL who are probably better suited to the format.

Not surprised. I did warn this would happen in the original thread about the team.

Jesse Wagstaff
Jesse Wagstaff
Jesse Wagstaff
Jesse Wagstaff
Greg Hire
Greg Hire
Greg Hire
Greg Hire

At a guess we don't really know who was available, injuries and other commitments could have made the team what it was.

Let's be honest, nobody cares much about 3x3 basketball. No disrespect, it just doesn’t generate any relative interest.

For fear of trying to replace fossils with fossils but Brad Newley and Dave Barlow would have been interesting to watch play in this tournament.

I'd have loved to see someone like Emmett Naar play in this tournament as quick paced and his tremendous vision and playmaking.

I didn't see the final but was Greg Hire still injured and playing next to no time

England swings..the motherland reigning supreme...no disgrace losing to the hone of the greatest athletes in the world..round ball games we own...
3 on 3...gold strawberries and cream jolly good .... pommie and proud...

3x3 is entertaining, for the 10 minutes it goes for. What it isn't, is basketball, any more than T20 is cricket.

I guess it shows you don't need to be a good basketball nation to find 4 guys who can hoop enough to do well in 3X3. In fact, it may be better to have a poor national league and national team as you can focus on 3x3.

I would bet most countries, even the worst performers in international ball, could find 4 guys that are at least competitive with a team of average NBL players.

This was my first taste of 3X3 and overall I didn't really like the game.

I did enjoy the wheelchair version.

Australia and England pretty much ran roughshod over the other teams (apart from England v Canada).

England's strategy seems to have been to select 4 players who were a similar middling height who were athletically gifted but lacked a consistent shot or fundamentals who could run the other teams off their feet and it worked.

Australia got so close in the final because they played the basketbrawl style of play that typified NZ and PER in the the 2010s. So much contact that if the refs were to have called every foul both teams would have been shooting free throws constantly. Then attempting to bully/intimidate the referees.

Hire and Wright have been mainstays in the team since Australia started having a team so their inclusion shouldn't have surprised anyone but sending an unathletic geriatric squad overall was in contrast to the other teams.

DJ is a legend. 6ers so lucky he has hung around what has otherwise been a shit-show.

The 3X3 thing hasnt really taken off as many would've thought. The standard, full-court version of basketball is just far too dynamic for such a contained version of the game to compete with. It doesn't really matter to me how Australia does in 3X3 but I think if we were taking it seriously, a player like Brad Newley or David Barlow with their size, length, athleticism, shooting ability and lack of off-season playing prospects would be much better gets than Wagstaff or Hire. 3 X 3 lends itself to agile and versatile shooting guards/small forwards, and isnt really a big man's game.

There's a difference between 3x3 not taking off, and you not being a fan of it. I'm not a fan either, but the spread of 3x3 around the world has been huge, events are everywhere and it's an Olympic sport.

Lots of things are Olympic sports.

All of them widespread.

I don't think being an Olympic sport and being huge are necessarily the same.

Competitive walking does not appear to be huge but is an Olympic sport nonetheless.

Breakdancing debuts in 2024.

Probaly a bad example KET. Walking is a historic Olympic sport. 3x3 has recently been added, which means it must meet criteria for popularity around the world.

It's not a bad example, you used Olympics as proof of being huge, but now you’ve shifted the goal posts to "new" sports.

“ The Tokyo 2020 committee listed the following criteria for new sports: added value; youth appeal; attractiveness for TV, media and the general public; gender equality; minimum impact on the number of events and/or quotas, infrastructure and operational costs and complexity.”

So.... basically they’ve chucked it in because they think it might attract youngsters, not because popular.

There’s a whole host of sports that aren’t huge because you only really see it at Olympics and even then isn’t a blue ribbon Olympic sport. 3x3 would be one of them.

It’s not like the 100m sprint where everyone knows the name of the winner by the end of it. Most people wouldn’t know who won the 3x3 and the names of the people that played.

Most people wouldn't even know 3x3 was an Olympic sport. It had escaped my notice until this thread.

You not noticing is not a good measure of what is happening around the world.

Trying to make the Olympics appeal to a younger audience because fewer people are watching? Yeah nah.

Rock climbing competition I actually like, but break dancing to replace old-fashioned pentathlon? Nope. What next? Line dancing? Gumboot chucking? Sheep shearing?

As it is, there's too many sports and people at the Olympics.

I think you've missed the point. I don't like 3x3. But the fact the Olympics are including it to increase appeal is the point, the take up of 3x3 around the world has been huge.

Some people think because it's not in the news in Australia it's not been successful, but Australia has never really been a good measure of what's popular in sport around the world, or else rugby league and aussie rule would be in the Olympics.

How refreshing to have someone else on here who gets it. It's not all about you.

England's strategy seems to have been to select 4 players who were a similar middling height who were athletically gifted but lacked a consistent shot or fundamentals who could run the other teams off their feet and it worked.