Cierra Burdick with Team USA for Olympic 3x3 basketball

USA BASKETBALL

Cierra Burdick, who played high school basketball at Butler and South Mecklenburg, is on the United States' women's 3x3 squad at the Paris Olympics.

Cierra Burdick is what Cierra Burdick does.

For the 2023 FIBA 3X World Cup champion, that meant getting rebounds, scoring on pick-and-rolls, and the occasional bounce pass through a defender’s legs for the dime.

Burdick, a Tennessee alum, played at South Mecklenburg and Butler high schools and was a finalist for the Naismith National High School Player of the Year award in 2011.

Most recently, Burdick, 30, had been playing the full-court game in Spain. She also played in Italy, Israel, Russia, Poland and France. From 2015-17 and 2020-21 she played in the WNBA for seven teams as well as Force 10, the first professional U.S. women’s 3x3 team.

“Any time you have the opportunity to represent your country, it is special,” she told USA Basketball last year. “In high school, you’re representing your neighborhood. In college, it’s your state. With USA Basketball, you’re representing your country on the world stage. It’s an honor and a privilege. And now it’s up to us to make most of this opportunity and to remain humble and grateful.”

She’s been refining her 3x3 skills for a decade.

“In between my junior and senior year of college, when Carol Callan (former Women’s National Team Director) called and asked me if I wanted to play in the 2014 3x3 World Cup, I just knew from then I could see a future with this sport.”

When 3x3 basketball became an official Olympic sport for 2020, Burdick was in the pool of players to be selected. She wasn’t picked and was concerned her chance to play on the Olympic stage might be lost. But she stayed the course and eventually won the World Cup last year.

Burdick has represented USA Basketball and independent 3x3 programs on the FIBA circuit since 2014, and has seen the half-court game expand in popularity, especially in Europe.
“It's grown like crazy,” Burdick said. “I think the U.S. is kind of late to the party when it comes to 3x3. It's much bigger in Europe and even in some parts of Asia.”

A 3x3 primer

Games are played to 21 points with a 10-minute limit and a 12-second shot clock. Winning scores may be less than 21. Each team has four players.

In both the men's and women's 3x3 tournaments, there are eight teams competing. They will play each other over the course of the first round. From there, they will be ranked based on their records. The top-two teams will advance directly to the semifinals, and the bottom-two teams will be eliminated. The other-four teams will compete in the play-in round (3rd vs. 6th, 4th vs. 5th), with the winners moving on to the semifinal.

In 3x3, a field goal from beyond the arc is worth two points, and a field goal taken from inside the arc is worth one point. In traditional basketball, they are worth three and two points, respectively. Free throws are worth one point each.

A mountain to climb

After three of seven matches in pool play, the Olympic champions from Tokyo have yet to win a game, endangering the USA’s chances of repeating. They lost to Germany 17-13, Azerbaijan 20-17, and Australia 17-15.

The team that took the top of the podium in Tokyo included Stefanie Dolson, Alisha Gray, Kelsea Plum and Jackie Young. They only lost one game in pool play on their way to the first gold medal in Olympic women’s 3x3 basketball. Plum and Young are in Paris for these games with the 5v5 women’s team.

This is an entirely new Olympic squad. Burdick and Rhyne Howard earned their spots by leading the World Cup winning team. They were joined by Haley van Lith and WNBA rookie Cameron Brink, who tore her ACL in June and was replaced by Dearica Hamby.  They are still searching for chemistry.

“I look back at my first World Cup in 2014 and think about the World Cup that we played last year,” Burdick said. “We won in 2014 off of pure athleticism and skill that wouldn't win nowadays. Now with 3x3, there's so much scheming and strategy that goes behind it and that's just a testament of the growth and the development that we've seen over the years in the game.”

Hamby played collegiately at Wake Forest and now competes for the Los Angeles Sparks. Howard played for Kentucky and now for the Atlanta Dream. Van Lith is still in college and will play for Texas Christian after previously playing for Louisville and LSU.

The team is coached by Jen Rizzotti, the former Connecticut and WNBA great and president of the Connecticut Sun. Much like tennis though, Rizzotti cannot coach during the game so much of that leadership is falling to Burdick.

In FIBA’s individual player rankings, Burdick is 10th, van Lith 34th, Hamby 190th, and Howard not listed in the top 250. The FIBA 3x3 Individual World Ranking is calculated based on the 9 best results in FIBA-endorsed events played in the last 12 months. Don’t read too much into that. For WNBA players who don’t compete in many FIBA events, their rankings would naturally be lower.

They will have to produce results against Spain, France, Canada, and China to make the knockout rounds. The top six teams from pool play will advance, so the Americans still have everything to play for.

USA men struggling as well

While the American men didn’t even qualify for the Tokyo games, they were considered contenders for gold in this one. But they have also lost their first three games to Serbia (22-15), Poland (19-17), and Lithuania (20-18). They have games remaining against 2020 gold medalists Latvia, France, China and Netherlands.

The roster includes Jimmer Fredette, a former college star at BYU who gained fame for his three-point shooting, experienced 3x3 players Canyon Barry, Kareem Maddox and Dylan Travis.  This group won the 2022 AmeriCup, the 2023 Pan American Games, and finished second at the 2023 FIBA World Cup.

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