FIBA 3X3 Olympic Qualifier To Take Place Next June In Austria

With the return of NBA basketball getting closer, let’s not forget that Olympic basketball will take place next summer … and three-on-three hoops will be a part of the Games for the first time when they are held in Tokyo.

FIBA, the governing body for international basketball, has now announced that qualifying will take place in Graz, Austria on May 26-30, 2021.

Forty teams (20 in each gender) from 36 different countries will compete at the FIBA 3×3 Olympic Qualifier for the 6 tickets (3 per gender) to Tokyo. The local organizers will build a temporary outdoor venue of a 2,000-seat capacity for the occasion.

The United States
USM
has gotten a peak at 3X3 basketball through Ice Cube’s Big Three league, which began play in 2017 and had several former NBA players participating. The league is on ice this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Internationally, 3X3 was played successfully for the first time at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore and since then has benefited from the launch of a yearly city-based FIBA 3×3 World Tour and national-team FIBA 3×3 World & Continental Cups.

The United States men are currently ranked fifth internationally behind Serbia, Russia, China and Mongolia. For the Olympics, competitors cannot have played for the national team in basketball for another country in an Official Competition of FIBA, except with a special dispensation from FIBA’s Secretary General, according to Tokyo guidelines.