When it comes to the god of basketball, even people who know nothing about basketball will look down at their shoes and tell you that they are "Michael Jordan", but when it comes to the god of basketball in 3×3, most people's first reaction is: 3× 3 basketball? Is this a basketball game? Isn't it all because of the expediency of a group of people playing when the field is tight?
Since 2012, FIBA has organized six 3x3 basketball World Cups, and Serb Dusan Bulut and his compatriots have won the championship four times on the courts of Greece, China, France and the Philippines. For most of his career, he was FIBA's no. 1 3v3 player and the well-deserved GOAT (the greatest player of all time) in 3×3 basketball circles.
Of course, even in the 3×3 basketballs, the public still knows very little about Toussaint and 3×3 basketball. Why is there a 3×3 basketball game in a 100-year-old full-court basketball game? Are these two the same thing?
Fifteen years ago, FIBA took 3×3 basketball as a project, formally developed a common set of rules, organized testing events, and most importantly, unified many of the world's existing tournaments into a pyramid network under its administration.
FIBA's motivation is clear: it wants the leaner, faster 3×3 games to appeal to a younger generation of spectators who enjoy endless entertainment options. But everyone knows that this generation of young people has a very limited attention span, what they need is a short video of 15 seconds, a song of 1 minute, the original game is too cumbersome and time-consuming, who wants to stare at a basketball game that claims to be 48 minutes and actually takes 120 minutes? Can you catch the attention of young people as soon as possible?
3×3 Basketball is seen as a way to lower the barrier to entry into international competition for basketball-loving countries whose resources or talent pools cannot be compared to those of a powerful country like the United States, but who also love basketball. What's more, 3×3 basketball also meets the needs of Olympic rejuvenation, just like skateboarding and rock climbing. Therefore, in 2017, the Olympic Committee decided to include 3×3 basketball in the official Olympic Games.
Robbie Hummel, a member of the U.S. 3×3 basketball team, said: "I think it's a lot like what beach volleyball means to regular volleyball: there's a really cool concentrate on a very popular sport. ”
The 3×3 game was only 21 minutes a set, no 3-pointers, and the offensive time was 12 seconds; the space freed up by the fewer players on the court promoted the creativity of the game (the playing field was also 3 meters shorter than the half of a traditional basketball court). There are no coaches and there is very little rest time in the game. This is a new basketball game with all the rules emphasizing fast-paced and high-intensity. It was born out of basketball, and it is far from traditional basketball.
FIBA Secretary General and IOC Commissioner Patrick Bowman explained: "The concept of 3x3 basketball has all the elements and skills needed for the sport of basketball, and it has inspired and will continue to inspire many great players in the future. At the same time, it is one of the easiest and most effective ways to bring young people into basketball, retain them, and promote our game. ”
Learned some basics of 3×3 basketball. Surely some people will say: That professional players come to this event, do amateur players still play? But it's not that simple. As mentioned earlier, 3×3 basketball is designed to help some countries that love basketball but are not well developed. So 3×3 basketball games have an unusual qualifying system designed to develop the sport throughout the year and find the best team for the World Cup. National team participation is strictly based on the country's official 3×3 rankings. The ranking system of the national team also takes into account the ranking of individual players. Even the ranking of countries that ostensibly allows teams to qualify for the World Cup is not enough to qualify, because FIBA currently stipulates that the 20 men and women teams participating in a year's World Cup must come from 30 different countries, making it more difficult for individual countries to get both male and female players into the World Cup.
3×3 basketball god Toussaint used to be a traditional basketball player, like many young people, he watched AND1's mixtape street basketball highlights, Marbury and Iverson's highlight video fell in love with basketball, as an adult he had been in Serbia, Hungary, Bosnia and Macedonia teams, but then he found that 3V3 basketball can release his free-spirited soul.
Why aren't so many professional players involved in 3×3 basketball games? Both Toussaint and his teammates are from the Novi Sad region of Serbia. His humble origins and harsh circumstances have always been a force that motivates them to move forward.
Toussaint said: "This game is always difficult and uncomfortable, like someone pinching your neck and making you breathless. That's why we're good at this: we win prize money through competitions and guarantee our normal lives. For example, people from Canada, Sweden or Qatar go to play 3×3, and if they win a game, they still get less money than they do a job like a bank. For us, it's a matter of survival. ”
So the vast majority of 3×3 athletes in the world are not the elite of professional basketball. The prize money for the World Cup match is only six figures, and it is worth four people.
Go back to the game, friends who watch 3 × 3 basketball these days must have found out. The rhythm of this game is very different from the whole game, and the friends who often play the ball also have a number in mind, the difference between the half and the whole game is very large, and some of the correct decisions in the whole game are completely wrong in the 3×3 game. So the real 3V3 basketball masters, even if almost all of them have changed careers in 5V5, but if they want to adapt to the 3×3 basketball rules, they have to go through at least a year or so of running-in period to fully adapt.
In terms of playing style, want to rely on the advantage of body shape to play back? In traditional basketball, the scores are 2 points and 3 points, and the difference is not large; in 3×3 basketballs, there are 2 points outside the three-point line, and all of them are 1 point, which is a full double. This is the change of direction in encouraging players who are not so tall to attack from the outside. In 3×3, the inside line is actually very restricted, because many teams do not need the threat of rebounds and protective frames, and what they need is the player's unlimited ability to change defenses, the higher the height, the slower the pace is the unchangeable truth.
In most 3×3 basketball teams, the players are between 1 meter tall and 9-2 meters tall, and the players are not too tall to drag the team's offensive rhythm, nor will they be particularly short to fight against losses. For example, the height of the Serbian four, which ranked first in the 3×3 Olympic Games, is 1 meter 91, 2 meters, 1 meter 94 and 1 meter 99. The tallest and shortest players in 3V3 basketball at this Olympic Games are all from our country: Gao Shiyan at 1.85 meters and Hu Jinqiu at 2.10 meters.
The candidates for the 3×3 basketball events of the Olympic Games have made waves before. There are always some people who think that 3×3 basketball is the same as traditional basketball, and it is not easy to win the opponent by sending a few professional players out of the horse? Zheng Yi, who helped 3 × 3 basketball to qualify for the Olympic Games, was unloaded to kill the donkey, and the professional players of the CBA were entrusted with heavy responsibilities by the Basketball Association, and as a result, we also saw that despite the highlight of the fight against Poland, it lost to Japan in the last game and was killed by Tominaga Qisheng, so that the Chinese 3×3 men's basketball team went to the Olympics for the first time, ranking first in the bottom of all eight teams.
The NBA also held its own New NBA 3x3 Summer League back in 2016. The 3×3 and NBA2K, the three-point game for fans, and the live music show were packaged together into carnival-like events. 3×3 basketball is booming, and domestic competitions like the king of passers-by have emerged. This piece of jianghu independent of professional basketball has its own exclusive jianghu rules, and it is not something that an outsider can casually break into. Maybe one day, China will be able to cultivate its own Toussaint-Brut?