TOKYO — Every game of three-on-three basketball, which made its debut this summer as an Olympic sport, began the same way: a countdown from 10 over the arena speakers that finished “five … four … three … X … THREE!”
Kelsey Plum, a member of the American women’s team, described the scene as “pandemonium, like you’re shot out of a cannon.”
Time will tell whether three-on-three — or 3x3, as it is officially known here — catches fire as an Olympic sport, but the five-day run of games at the Aomi sports complex in Tokyo provided precisely the type of spectacle that its organizers had hoped for: a high intensity, visually dynamic, low-bar-of-entry diversion from the more structured feel of five-on-five basketball.