Dolson leads US to 2 wins
TOKYO — Anyone who’s ever jacked up a fadeaway 3 in a pickup basketball game knows there are two sure ways to start a fight on the playground.
Talk trash about someone’s mom.
Or call an offensive foul.
In the debut of 3-on-3 halfcourt hoops at the Olympics on Saturday, Arvin Slagter of The Netherlands set a vicious pick on Dejan Majstorovic of Serbia that sent Majstorovic crumpling to the ground.
A whistle blew. A referee wearing a slate-gray T-shirt and black shorts balled his hand into a fist, thrust out his arm and made the call that would get fists flying in a totally different way in a real street game. “Offense!” he shouted as he called the foul.
On the women’s side, former UConn star Stefanie Dolson lead the U.S. to a pair of victories on Saturday. She had seven points and six rebounds in a 17-10 win over France and came back later in the day with five points and three blocks in a 21-9 win over Mongolia.
“3-on-3 is basketball in a very intense way,” said Slagter’s teammate, Jessey Voorn. “But it is not streetball.”
The Olympics like the idea of “streetball” because they’re doing everything they can to inject the busy summer program with sports that will attract a younger, more
international audience.
In at least one way, 3-on-3 is fitting the bill perfectly. The game invented and perfected in the United States does not have a U.S. team on the men’s side of the eight-team Olympic bracket. But it does have the women’s team from Mongolia.
It does not have fans, at least not in Tokyo, where they are not allowed in because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It does have DJs. They were in the house all day, spinning records — Daft Punk, Kanye West and more — for the empty stands that, someday, will be full again.
The games take place on a gray court situated under a cone-shaped canopy that covers the middle of an arena built to seat 7,100. Even in the shade, the heat index cracked 90 degrees on a sweltering afternoon near Tokyo Bay.
“I’ve said they call it ‘streetball’ only because of the environment,” said Dolson.
“They have music playing. There’s a commentator on the sound system saying “Big Mama Stef!’ [her nickname earned at UConn]. You’re outside and the weather can play a factor. It’s streetball in that way.”
The Olympic version is like the pickup game in this way, too: 3s from behind the arc are worth 2 points and 2s from inside are worth 1, and teams have to clear the ball past the arc after a rebound. The first team to 21 wins, but to keep things moving, if nobody hits that number in 10 minutes, whoever is ahead wins the game. Six of the first 12 games on Day 1 ended that way, including the American women’s win over France.
As if to cement the idea that the sport really has reached the big-time, when the U.S. women played France on Saturday night, they had French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. First Lady Jill Biden watching from the virtually empty stands.
“She brought all the energy,” the USA’s Kelsey Plum said of Biden. “We asked her to come back.”
Not for their next game, though. In another unique twist not seen in the traditional 5-on-5 version, the 3-on-3 teams often play multiple games in a single day.
Only a few hours after the U.S. beat France, Biden had moved on, while Dolson and Co., came back and wiped out Mongolia in a contest that wrapped up in a tidy 13 minutes (in real time).
It could have been even quicker.