PARIS — The United States was eliminated from the men's 3×3 basketball competition on Sunday at the Paris Olympics after going 2-5 in the group stage while playing its final five games without star Jimmer Fredette.
“We've struggled a lot, I think we ran out of steam playing with three,” Canyon Barry said. “It's very tough… my heart still hurts for Jimmer. It's not fair that someone with that much character has to go through this.”
Fredette came in to bolster the team after it failed to qualify for the Tokyo Games, and his play helped the U.S. enter these Olympics as the second seed. But he suffered a lower-extremity injury in the team's second game and did not play again.
The U.S. opened the group stage with four losses. Barry, son of Basketball Hall of Famer Rick Barry, played strong games and the team posted wins over France and China before the Americans fell 21-6 to the Netherlands on Sunday.
The United States is wondering what would have happened if Fredette had not been injured.
“Most of our team is focused on him offensively,” Canyon Barry said. “We're turning the play around a lot. So when he comes out, we had to completely change the way we play.”
The United States had the same number of group stage wins as Poland, but lost the tiebreaker because Poland beat the United States in the second game of the tournament.
“It's tough because it doesn't matter if we're a man down or something, we expect to come in and give our best performance, leave it all on the court, and I think we did that, so we can be proud of that,” Kareem Maddox said. “But it's not what America expects when it comes to basketball. So we're not disappointed in our effort, we're disappointed in the results.”
Despite the early elimination, U.S. coach Joe Lewandowski is proud of the progress the team has made after missing the last Olympics.
“Now we have to keep moving forward,” he said. “Any time you go to events like this, you're setting the stage for the future. You can take this and say, 'How can we get better?' And that's how you get better as a country and that's what we do with USA Basketball.”
China was also eliminated after finishing 1-6 in the group stage.
Holders Latvia and the Netherlands are through to Monday's semi-finals after finishing first and second in the group stage. Latvia won all seven group games and the Netherlands finished 5-2.
“The next important match is the semi-final, but our goal is the gold medal,” said Latvian Nauris Miezis. “Now we have to forget what happened in the last five days and focus on the semi-final.”
Sarunas Vingelis and Evaldas Dziaugys each scored nine points to lead Lithuania to a 21-15 victory over Poland in the first play-in game on Sunday night.
Jules Rambaut scored eight points to give France a 22-19 victory over Tokyo bronze medallist Serbia in the other play-in game. France was leading by one point when Timothe Vergiat hit a two-point shot to end the game with eight seconds left and sparked a wild celebration from the mostly French crowd.
Lithuania will face the Netherlands in the semi-finals on Monday and Latvia will face France.
