This weekend, the Fiba 3×3 World Tour Finals are being held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and the BBC will stream the semi-finals and final.
Twelve teams will compete in four groups for a place in the eight-team knockout phase.
This year’s tour has been shorter than usual because of coronavirus – five events instead of the 14 held in 2019.
3×3 is set to make its debut at next year’s rescheduled 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
What is 3×3 Basketball?
Growing out of the game played worldwide in parks and recreation areas – known as Streetball, Blacktop or Playground Ball – 3×3 is reckoned to be the world’s most-played urban team sport. Organised events add elements of urban culture like dancers, DJs and dunk contests. It is estimated that 182 countries and more than 430,000 players worldwide play 3×3.
In 2010, the sport made its debut at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. Basketball’s world governing body Fiba drew up rules for the new variant and a World Cup for nations and the World Tour for clubs have followed. In 2017, 3×3 was selected to the Tokyo Olympics Games, the first of the YOG sports to make the transition.
Rules of 3×3
The game is played into a single basket of a regular five-a-side basketball court. Teams are of four players with three players on court and one substitute. The scoring is one point per basket from inside the arc (the three-point line on a regular court). Beyond the arc is worth two points. For fouls, there is a single free throw awarded, worth one point.
The winner is the first team to reach 21 points, or the leading team after 10 minutes of play. If scores are level at 10 minutes, the first team to two points is the winner.
The contenders
Serbia has proved the dominant nation in 3×3 and has developed its teams separately from the full five-a-side game, with their national team winning four world titles since 2012.
They have three teams in the Jeddah finals, with Novi Sad and Liman expected to challenge for the title with Latvia’s Riga. Novi Sad will be without Dusan Bulut, the top-ranked player in the world, but are still likely to feature while Liman have three players – Stefan Kojic, Mihailo Vasic and Alex Ratkov – who are ranked in the top six.
Latvia’s Riga have the top-five pairing of Nauria Miezis and Karlis Lasmanis to look out for, with the United States’ NY Harlem squad featuring ninth-ranked Dominique Jones.
