Here’s everything you need to know about the latest Olympic sport. Just a decade after featuring at the Youth Olympics, 3x3 basketball made its bow in the senior event - for both men and women - at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games. In 2010, the 3x3 game even made its global competitive debut at the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.
Its soaring popularity eventually saw it being structured into a professional sport, with official rules sanctioned by the international basketball federation (FIBA), into the game that we know as 3x3 basketball today. However, it wasn’t long before the backyard past-time became a cultural phenomenon.
Having originated as street basketball in the urban and semi-urban areas of the USA in the late 1980s, the game, at its core, is a condensed form of traditional full-court basketball. From the bustling streets of America to the Olympics – 3x3 basketball has shot into the limelight with blistering speed, much like the pace the game is played with.
