As the United States men prepare for their debut in the Olympic Games 3×3 basketball competition, we know Fran Fraschilla will be there in Paris. He did not pick the team. He will not coach it. His title with USA Basketball – “Senior Advisor” to the program – is a bit nebulous. But we do know the men would not be there without him.
Especially Jimmer Fredette, the 2011 Naismith Award winner at BYU and top-10 NBA Draft pick who could emerge as the star of the United States team.
It was Fraschilla — the ESPN college basketball analyst and former St. John’s coach — who connected with Fredette and convinced him he still had something to give to basketball, and basketball still had something to give to him. He just would need to operate with two fewer teammates to get there.
“Obviously, we all know Jimmer Fredette, and I had a casual friendship with him, just because of basketball,” Fraschilla told The Sporting News.
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They actually bumped into each other in China in 2016, when Harvard played Stanford in Shanghai, and Fran traveled there to watch his son Matt, then a Crimson point guard.
“Knowing me, I went to a Shanghai Sharks game,” Fraschilla said. “I sat with Yao Ming and saw some of the Americans. Jimmer had a quiet 53 points that night. And I went down to the locker room afterwards, took a picture with him, said hi.”
It was fortuitous for USA Basketball that when Fredette chose to retire from basketball in 2022 after six seasons in the NBA and five spent playing for pro teams internationally, he settled in Denver. That’s directly up the highway from Fraschilla’s home in Colorado Springs. For less than a tank of gas and a nice lunch, Fraschilla was able to make a recruiting pitch in June 2022 to Fredette to give 3×3 a try.
“I actually had people within USA Basketball who said, ‘You’ll never get Jimmer Fredette to play this’,” Fraschilla told SN. “I told him it might be an opportunity to cap your incredible career by helping us qualify for Paris. He thought about it and said, ‘I think I’m in.’
“And so we introduced him to the the sport in October of 2022, Jimmer took to it and committed to it all last summer. And they got to know each other and helped us qualify for Paris by November of 2023. That’s the main reason we kept the team together, because there was great continuity.”
In addition to Fredette, who was named the USA Basketball men’s 3×3 athlete of the year for 2023, the squad consists of former Florida wing Canyon Barry, former Princeton forward Kareem Maddox and former Florida Southern guard Dylan Travis.
The rules do not allow USA Basketball to round up four NBA guys who didn’t make the senior men’s team in the established version of the sport. Players must commit to playing a certain number of FIBA 3×3 events, which are staged primarily in the summer and fall.
The coaches in Paris will be former Point Park University coach Joe Lewandowski and James Fraschilla, whose day job is with the Washington Wizards’ G League team. All their work must be done in between games, however; coaching is not permitted during the competition, similar to how it once operated in tennis. The players make substitution decisions themselves, with the primary goal being to stay fresh in the physically taxing sprint.
“This team that’s been selected is pretty much at the end of the ‘pioneer’ phase of 3×3,” Fraschilla said.
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To understand why Fraschilla has mattered to the 3×3 program, we take you back one Olympiad, to the introduction of the sport to the Olympic movement. MVP Robbie Hummel, Maddox, Barry and Damon Huffman went 7-0 at the 2019 World Cup and won the tournament for USA Basketball by an average of 9 points, a staggering differential given that teams run 10 minutes or to 21 points, whichever comes first.
The arcane world ranking process, though, which involves gathering points by performing well in as many tournaments as possible, left the United States in fifth place, two spots out of automatic qualification. That meant having to qualify through a tournament, and they encountered a hot-shooting squad from the Netherlands that knocked them out in the quarterfinals. They were done.
In May 2022, Fraschilla was appointed as head coach for the men’s entry on the FIBA World Tour. He’s been with USA Basketball since, and he put together the structure of the 3×3 program. It is no coincidence the men now find themselves with the world No. 1 ranking – with a 30 percent higher points total than No. 2 China. That success conveyed automatic entry into the eight-team field for the Olympic 3×3 competition, which will commence July 30 against Serbia.
It’s obvious from the rosters that 3×3 does not comprise the best basketball players in the world, which makes it relatively uncommon among Olympic sports. The fastest men and women in the world will win the sprints, and the best distance runners will win the marathons. The golf and tennis competitions endeavor to get the highest-ranked players in the world to compete.
Fraschilla contends 3×3 is an “incredible player development tool” because the fast pace forces athletes to achieve and maintain a high level of conditioning, as well as a high degree of skill and decision-making. He believes it can grow into what beach volleyball has relative to the traditional six-player indoor game. FIBA assures there is music playing during the 3×3 competition to promote a similar festive atmosphere to what we see in Olympic beach volleyball.
“This is a growing sport that’s about 10 years old. FIBA thought of this concept as a way, in part, to celebrate smaller countries that love basketball but don’t necessarily have the wherewithal to put 12 really good players on the floor,” Fraschilla said. “To me it’s very similar to beach volleyball. It looks the same as basketball, but it’s a different sport.
“It’s quicker, faster. People find it very entertaining. It’s very fast. It’s very taxing conditioning-wise. There’s no place to rest. The ball goes through the basket, you can throw it right out to a guy who’s open behind the 2-point line, and they can shoot it. There’s no time to celebrate.”
There will be if Fredette can lead the U.S. men to gold for the first time. There just won’t be as many guys to collect their medals.