A practical guide to understanding how 3×3 basketball works

Olympic 3×3 takes place in Paris at the La Concorde complex, a series of small temporary stadiums built in the tourist centre of the city, very close to the Seine, to host so-called “urban” sports. Its rules are roughly as follows: It is played on a rectangular field of 15×11 m. With a single hoop. The first to reach 21 points or who is ahead on the scoreboard at the end of 10 minutes of regulation time wins. Baskets from outside the lines are worth 2 points, the rest are worth 1 point. The ball is slightly smaller and the hoop is at the same height as in 5×5 (3.05 m). Possession lasts 12 seconds.

Once possession has been changed, the ball must be moved over the outside line before it can be shot at the basket again. If the score is tied at the end of the game, overtime will be played and the first team to score two points will win. After seven fouls, the offensive team will receive two shots per foul instead of one. Once the 10-foul barrier is crossed, the opposing team will have two shots and possession for each new foul.

Highly dynamic, with very short time limits and lots of contact played in small spaces, the game has grown tremendously, going from its street origins in the playgrounds of big American cities to “mainstream”, having debuted as an experiment at the Singapore Youth Games in 2010 before securing a place on the Olympic programme for Tokyo 2020.