In the past year, there seemed to be not many good stories about the men’s basketball team. Xinjiang withdrew from the competition, played tacitly in the playoffs, was eliminated from the World Cup, and was reversed in the Asian Games. A series of incidents tested the fans’ ability to withstand pressure. But there are also bright spots, such as the “Wandering Earth” belonging to China’s three-person men’s and women’s basketball teams – a point-grabbing battle surrounding the direct quota for the Paris Olympics.
In July this year, during a break in the FIBA 3×3 Masters Macau leg, Zhang Ning, who was playing for the Liman team, was sweating while describing to the media that the living conditions of himself and his teammates were like “wandering on the earth.”
As far as the three-person men’s basketball team is concerned, the so-called “Wandering Earth” refers to the journey of 31 players who intensively flew to various parts of the world to compete within six months to win FIBA 3X3 points in exchange for the only three direct quotas for the Paris Olympics. . With the direct qualification obtained, “The Wandering Earth” has become another miraculous sports story, and three-person basketball, a project that was only regarded as a side branch of five-person basketball in the past, has also begun to attract more people’s attention.
However, Zhu Yuanbo, a three-player basketball player who has also experienced the “Wandering Earth”, told Lanxiong Sports that three-player basketball has entered the public eye. This group of players is actually just a link between the past and the future. There were pioneers in the past, and others will take over the torch in the future. , keep moving forward.
Enterprises set up a platform and the climate is beginning to take shape
In 1993, Hong Kong’s Victoria Park held a three-person basketball competition, which is regarded as the origin of the three-person basketball project in Hong Kong and the Mainland. But the real development of three-person basketball would have to wait until ten years later, with the emergence of the KFC three-person basketball game.
As a youth event, the KFC 3-person basketball game received support from the Chinese Basketball Association. It continued to be held from 2004 to before the epidemic, covering about 5,000 schools and attracting nearly 3 million applicants. The emergence of commercial competitions has “consolidated” domestic three-person basketball from a state of disorder. In the first decade of the 21st century, brands such as Converse, 361°, Walter, and Gatorade have all sponsored regional three-basketball events. Through event marketing to convey brand concepts and public participation to expand brand influence, three-person basketball once became the darling of commercial games.
▲In the 2013 KFC three-person basketball game finals, Zhang Ziyi was elected MVP.
Later, this trend developed and there were mass competitions radiating across the country, such as the Sina 3X3 Golden League founded in 2015. In the book “Event Gold Mine”, Wei Jianglei, the former general manager of Sina Sports, mentioned this Sina-created IP that in the second half of 2015, Sina Sports began to lose the copyrights of many sports events, including the NBA and the Chinese Super League. And creating your own event “has both content sources and can generate traffic”, so the Golden League was born.
Different from past event organizers who focused on product promotion needs, the motive of creating content IP makes the Golden League have higher requirements for commercialization. For example, in order to seek more diversified revenue methods, the organizer hopes to move the competition venue to a supermarket. Wei Jianglei wrote in the book: Around 2016, the quotation for a weekend’s static display (setting up a booth, exposing the brand, and having marketing personnel present) in a shopping mall with a volume of 100,000 square meters was 60,000-100,000 yuan per two days; in 2018 During the season, the Golden League holds games in supermarkets and supermarkets in nearly 60 cities, and the offline display value created can reach 6 million yuan.
The characteristics of the three-person basketball project provide the possibility for the commercial needs of the Golden League. The advantages of three-person basketball are described in the “2020 Three-person Basketball National Team Business Plan”:
A game lasts ten minutes and is highly contagious;
Each attack and defense lasts 10 seconds, and the rhythm is tight;
21-point system, frequent kills, intense excitement;
Originated from the street, it is both competitive and entertaining.
In addition, there are only four people in a team and the venue is about half of a regular basketball court. Compared with five-a-side games, three-person basketball is more expensive in terms of game hosting costs, venue selection, organization and management, and registration thresholds. Meet the needs of commercial events. Therefore, for a long time, brand setting up a stage, grassroots singing, and private competitions have become the main ways of existence of domestic three-person basketball events.
In 2019, the Golden League has expanded to 185 cities, 30,000 teams, and up to 120,000 participants. In just five years, the project has gone from zero to 100,000 people participating, which is enough to prove that the project has a good mass base and demand for participation. But on the other hand, the public lacks awareness of regular three-person basketball games. Wei Jianglei mentioned in the book that when the game first started, many contestants needed to repeatedly explain even the most basic handover rules, and even individual referees did not fully grasp the rules of three-person basketball.
Restricted by various reasons such as the company’s own resources, public viewing habits and even policies and regulations, commercial events in China are ultimately limited. But high-quality events still gather a large number of teams and players. Among the players who participated in the “Wandering Earth” point-grabbing battle this year, Zhu Yuanbo, Guo Hanyu, Zhao Baiqing and others won the Golden League championship; the 2019 season championship Shanghai Shang Shi Long Chuang, the Shanghai station champion Y&M team, and the Changsha station champion Three Seconds Zone The team is the predecessor of the current Super Three League team; Zhang Ning was a player in the 2018 Golden League championship “Nowwhowho” team, and in that year’s Golden League International Classic, Zhang Ning’s home team this year, the Serbian team The Liman team was invited and won the championship.
While domestic commercial competitions are in the ascendant, on another timeline, three-person basketball is being transformed under the reform of FIBA. The above-mentioned teams and players will all be involved in this wave of change in the future.
Three baskets into the Olympics, grassroots play foreplay
To put it simply, in 2017, three-person basketball became an official event of the Tokyo Olympics.
In the five years from 2007 to 2012, FIBA took frequent actions, releasing the official rules of 3-player basketball, promoting the project to enter the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympic Games, and launching the 3-player Basketball World Championship (later changed to the World Cup) and World Tour. At present, the FIBA 3X3 competition system consists of national team events, professional events and authorized events. This system not only includes cup competitions between countries and tours between clubs, but also includes 3X3 events around the world. For example, Sina Golden League and KFC 3-person Basketball Game have received official FIBA certification, and participating teams and players can earn FIBA points.
Another important task is to establish the FIBA 3X3 points system. All events within the FIBA system are divided into 11 levels (including level 0). The higher the level of the event, the more points players can get. For example, the FIBA 3X3 Masters represents the highest level of level 10, the FIBA 3X3 World Cup is level 9, and the 2020 Golden League National Finals is a level 4 event. In 2019, when Zhu Yuanbo won the Golden League Shanghai Station (4) championship with “Y&M”, he scored 1,800 points. This year, when he won the FIBA Challenge Wuxi Station (9) championship with the Beijing team, he scored 1,800 points. Reached 53820 points.
A major role of points is to link them to Olympic qualifications. Only the top-ranked countries can pass directly or get tickets to the Olympic qualifying tournament.
▲Distribution of levels of some competitions
For Chinese basketball, FIBA’s efforts to promote three-person basketball seem to be an unexpected blessing and a timely help.
The happy thing is the three-person women’s basketball team. At the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympic Games, three-person basketball made its debut in the Olympics, and China’s U17 three-person women’s basketball team won the gold medal; at the 2019 3X3 Women’s World Cup, the women’s team won the first basketball world championship in my country’s history; at the Tokyo Olympics, After the bronze medal, this year he reached Paris first in points.
At the same time, when the Chinese five-man men’s basketball team lost their tickets to the Tokyo and Paris Olympics one after another, the three-man men’s basketball team also became “the hope of the whole village.” In 2013, the Chinese Basketball Association established a three-person basketball office, and Chai Wensheng became the person in charge. The establishment of this department is naturally closely related to the fact that three-person basketball has become a Youth Olympic Games project and is expected to be included in the Olympics.
Subsequently, a series of official actions included hosting the first National Three-on-One Men’s Basketball Championship in 2014, jointly launching the China Three-on-Three Basketball League with Nike in 2015, and in 2016 hosting the last FIBA 3X3 World Championship before the name was changed. . In this world championship, the four members of the men’s team are from the 2015 champion “Captain” and the 2016 champion “Baohua First Team” of the China Three-on-Three Basketball League. At this stage, amateur players became the protagonists of the three-player basketball world.
In 2017, with the entry of three-person basketball into the Olympics, the Chinese Basketball Association officially established a three-person basketball department. The Tianjin National Games held in the same year added four gold medals to this event. The four gold medals were eventually won by amateur teams. In the “I want to go to the Olympics” national three-person basketball competition that started at the end of that year, the amateur team Dongguan Mayong won the men’s open category championship. The players thus obtained the opportunity to represent the national team in the 2018 FIBA 3X3 Asian Cup and the Asian Games. opportunity and a historic gold medal as an amateur in Jakarta.
▲At the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games, China’s 3×3 men’s and women’s basketball teams took a group photo holding gold medals.
In 2018, the phrase “masters are among the people” was repeatedly mentioned by Yao Ming and Chai Wensheng, and “grassroots direct access to the national team” became the biggest gimmick to attract registrations for several official events. However, selecting amateur players from mass events may just be a realistic choice. An article published by the State Sports General Administration in July 2017 mentioned that there are no full-time three-player basketball coaches nationwide and only six international-level three-player basketball licensed referees. Chai Wensheng told Lanxiong Sports that at a certain international challenge, he saw a domestic team without a coach, and the team owner personally addressed several players.
In an interview with The Paper at the end of 2018, Chai Wensheng said bluntly: “The team we won in Jakarta went to Serbia for training and participated in a local seventh-level competition, which is a regional level event. We couldn’t even reach the semi-finals. Go in.” According to Lanxiong Sports statistics, in the two years between 2018 and 2019, a total of 90 domestic teams participated in 24 FIBA Masters or Challenge Tournaments. Only the Beijing team reached the semi-finals three times. A good result is third place. This Beijing team is actually equivalent to the three-basketball national team, including Chen Peidong, Ju Mingxin, Zheng Yi, Li Haonan, Liu Hengyi, etc., all of whom were national three-basketball players or CBA players at that time.
But at this time, the big test to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics is approaching.
Two direct connections, find a way through the rules
In 2019, Zhu Yuanbo became “busy”. He not only participated in the 2019 National 3-on-3 Basketball Championship hosted by the Chinese Basketball Association, the 2019 China 3-on-3 Basketball League, the National 3-on-3 Basketball Club Classic and the 2018-2019 China 3-on-3 Basketball Arena, but also played in the Golden League Shanghai Station and finals, and even participated in the FIBA Masters Nanjing Station, FIBA Challenge Wuxi Station and Kunshan Station.
Behind this busy schedule is the Chinese Basketball Association’s plan to impact the Tokyo Olympics through the “human sea tactic”. Because of the Tokyo cycle, the sum of the scores of the top 100 athletes in a country’s FIBA 3X3 points will be the country’s comprehensive points after calculation. The top four points can go directly to Tokyo. In other words, if you can’t compare with your skills, you can still compare with your head.
Therefore, the Chinese Basketball Association began to vigorously organize three basketball events. In 2019 alone, a number of top-rated basketball tournaments including the National 3-person Basketball Club Elite Tournament, the China 3-person Basketball Challenge, the “I Want to Go to the Olympics” National 3-person Basketball Arena and the China 3-on-3 Basketball League were held in China. Level 7 event. Various places have also hosted a number of FIBA Masters and Challenge tournaments.
With the “crowded tactic”, the men’s and women’s three-person basketball projects finally directly qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.
▲The three-person women’s basketball team won the bronze medal match at the Tokyo Olympics. Wang Lili (No. 23) and Yang Shuyu roared in celebration.
Unexpectedly, the three-man men’s basketball team that entered the Olympics was criticized by public opinion. At the Olympics, the three-man men’s team ranked last with 2 wins and 5 losses due to a small points disadvantage. In addition to the results, the selection has also caused widespread doubts. According to the rules, the official 4-man Olympic roster needs to have two players ranked among the top 10 domestic players in terms of points, which means that the operation of the other two places is very flexible. This is also true. In the final list, two CBA players, Hu Jinqiu and Gao Shiyan, appeared.
The controversy centered on Gao Shiyan’s selection and Zheng Yi’s defeat. Zheng Yi participated in 20 FIBA points events in 2019, represented the national team in the 3X3 Asian Cup and World Cup, and was the player with the number one points in the country that year. In contrast, Gao Shiyan has almost no experience in three-person basketball.
Therefore, when the three-man men’s basketball team won tickets to the Olympics again this year and when the story of “The Wandering Earth” became known to more people, who would go to Paris immediately became a topic of concern to fans. After all, this time, the three-man men’s basketball team The process of competing for points is more intense than four years ago.
Go back in time a little. After entering the Paris cycle, FIBA revised the promotion rules. Only the points for the top 25 players from a single country are calculated, and the points for different levels of competition are adjusted, weakening the weight of points for low-level competitions. In short, the crowd tactic has failed, and hosting a large number of games has little meaning.
Due to the epidemic, there were no external games for several years, and domestic players had very low points at that time. So in 2022, the Chinese Basketball Association launched an overseas training and competition plan. As the person in charge, Chai Wensheng stayed abroad for more than three months with Zhu Yuanbo, Guo Hanyu, Yan Peng and other players, with the purpose of “raising the points by one Let’s make a good starting point in 2023.”
Chai Wensheng said that his idea at the time was: “At the very least, we must rank among the top ten in the world. If we work hard in 2023, we may qualify for the Olympic qualifying competition.” In 2024, in addition to three direct quotas for the Paris Olympics, there will be another five The quota will be determined through three qualifying rounds. The most practical way is to lock the national points ranking in the top 16 and then play qualifying rounds with the remaining countries on the list. In November 2022, as the Beijing team finished fifth in the Masters Hong Kong Station, the three-person men’s basketball season came to an end. After several months of competition, China’s ranking improved from 45th at the beginning of the year to 15th.
▲In the 2022 FIBA 3X3 Masters Hong Kong Station, Zhu Yuanbo (No. 5) and Guo Hanyu compete.
It is worth mentioning that in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, the birthplace of Chinese three-player basketball, Chai Wensheng once again met the owner who personally guided the players in a challenge a few years ago – the investment of Wuxi Huishan Three-player Basketball Club Rui Yebin.
In fact, the Beijing team’s qualifications for the 2022 Masters Hong Kong Station and the previous Montreal Station were obtained by Rui Yebin directly purchasing wild cards. “I had the opportunity to buy a wild card, so I asked Chai Bu, and he said he needed it,” Rui Yebin said frankly to Lanxiong Sports. “The two wild cards were given to Beijing to serve the national team.”
While chatting, he heard that he needed to accumulate at least 6.5 million points to reach Paris. Rui Yebin proposed a bold idea to Chai Wensheng: he could try to get 3 million points. When Chai Wensheng heard this, he calculated that the Basketball Association could do more than 3 million points if they were close to each other. If the two sides added up, it might be possible. After a conversation, the goal of the three-man men’s basketball team changed from qualifying for the qualifying round to going straight to Paris.
This is indeed not a fantasy. FIBA’s Masters and Challenge tournaments allow teams of different nationalities to be formed, and the players’ points will be counted after the game. Therefore, except for some teams in Serbia and the United States, clubs in other countries are more or less foreign guns and local cannons. In 2019, domestic teams basically finished last in the Masters, but after the Chinese Basketball Association introduced four-time 3X3 World Cup (World Championship) champion player Marco Savic, he led the Beijing team to fifth place in the two Masters in 2022. name.
“Our athletes participating in high-level competitions under the combined Chinese and foreign team formation model are actually not far behind the world’s top teams,” Chai Wensheng said. “Based on the results harvested in 2022, we have some experience when considering direct access to the Olympics.”
The valuable thing about Rui Yebin’s promise is that he not only owns the domestic team Wuxi Huishan, but also the two top foreign three-person basketball teams Ubud and Liman, and even has the world’s number one player in the team. player and later teamed up with Riga. At first, his idea of acquiring overseas teams was simple, to facilitate the transportation of domestic players for training. But now, the existence of these teams can provide the most direct help in grabbing points.
In 2023, the Beijing team, Futian team, Wuhan team, Wuxi team, U21 national team, plus Ubud, Liman and Riga, are equipped with several teams with top domestic and foreign three-person basketball players, forming an international competition for Chinese players. Team matrix for basketball league games. What followed was a year that many fans are familiar with, in which 31 players “wandered the earth”. Data summarized by the public account “3-person Basketball Research Institute” shows that by the points deadline on November 1, 2023, members of the Chinese 3-person men’s basketball team have flown to more than 20 countries and participated in 66 international events. Winner of 4 Masters tournaments and 6 Challenge tournaments, he went straight to the Tokyo Olympics with the world ranking third.
▲Picture source: Weibo @中国三三级片National Team
Professional League, Fengqi Super 3
According to Chai Wensheng, promoting the three-person basketball project can not only make up for the shortcomings of the five-person men’s basketball team not being able to enter the Olympics, but also because this project does have the possibility of achieving international competition results. He still remembers that the three-man men’s basketball team only lost one point to Latvia in the Tokyo Olympics. “In the end, Latvia was the champion,” Chai Wensheng said.
Looking back, the controversial selection of players in the Tokyo cycle interrupted the tradition of grassroots representing the national team before 2019. It is not difficult to understand that in order to form a stronger lineup, professional players will replace amateur players. But the reality of ranking at the bottom shows that there are differences between three-person basketball and five-person basketball.
Three-player basketball needs its own professional league.
After the Tokyo Olympics, the creation of a professional league was put on the agenda. On December 12, 2021, the transitional season of the Super Three League began. On August 4 of the following year, the Super Three League, co-sponsored by the Chinese Basketball Association and its wholly-owned company Shenzhen Basketball Sports and composed of 16 teams, officially opened. This is the fourth professional basketball tournament in China after CBA, WCBA and NBL. At present, the league, which has lasted for two seasons, has formed a structure of 20 Super Three teams + 8 satellite teams, as well as the Women’s 3WL League.
The new league actually has many old faces. During the transition season, nearly half of the Super 3 teams had participated in the previous National 3-person Basketball Club Elite Tournament. As the champion of that season, Guangzhou Chimelong’s lineup is based on Dongguan Mayong, which won the 2018 Asian Games championship. Its final opponent, Shanghai Shanglong Chuang, was the team that won two consecutive championships in the China Three-on-Three Basketball League in 2016 and 2017, and was the overall champion of the Golden League in 2019.
Although the teams are all old acquaintances, as the 2022 Super Three League Finals MVP, Zhu Yuanbo told Lanxiong Sports that after the league started, the teams became more standardized and the personnel became more fixed, and the gap between the teams was slowly narrowing. At the beginning of this year, the three-man men’s team held a selection training camp. 29 of the 35-man roster were from the Super League Three, and they also formed the main force for the Olympics. After the return of this group of players from “wandering the earth”, the competition level of the league has been significantly improved. Zhu Yuanbo mentioned: “Shenzhen’s results this year are very good because young players like Liu Qianhao and Liu Changjiang have participated in high-level competitions and can drive the whole team when they come back.”
▲In the 2023 Super League Nanjing Championship, Chongming Hengsha Yumin team celebrates winning the championship.
At the same time, the Super League 3 has also attracted many new players, such as Guangzhou Yuepao Leopard Cats.
“From an Internet perspective, three-person basketball has stronger communication power,” Liang Feng, founder and CEO of Yuepaoquan, told Lanxiong Sports: “Nowadays, when short videos require several seconds to show one thing, three-person basketball It is a very good carrier. It originates from the grassroots, has complete game rules, has a huge mass base, and has a communication platform. The combination of these will provide good development space and opportunities.”
And with three-person basketball entering the Olympics and the preparation for a professional league, Liang Feng felt that the opportunity had come to try to run a professional club. As a professional club under Yuepao Circle, Guangzhou Yuepao Leopard Cats uses the Golden League Changsha Station championship brand “Three Seconds Zone” as the lineup framework and has started participating in the Super Three transition season.
In the book “Event Gold Mine”, Wei Jianglei wrote: If a start-up event does not have a large number of contestants, massive high-quality content, and billion-level media dissemination, it will not be able to create value for sponsors, so the initial investment in the event will It depends on the boss’ own money, angel investors or other investors.
For now, despite the professional nature, the Super Three League still needs to “pay out of pocket.” Liang Feng revealed that the current operating investment of a Super Three League team in a single season is more than 5 million, and it cannot break even for the time being. Most of the teams are maintained due to the love of investors.
To a certain extent, some players also rely on love to persist. According to Lanxiong Sports, many Super League three players usually appear in various amateur sports venues, that is, playing wild football. Zhu Yuanbo said that players from the professional echelon will have less experience playing in the field, and college students and other players will have more or less relevant experience. If competing in the Olympics is to realize a dream, playing in the field is equivalent to making a living.
“It’s because we didn’t provide them with better protection that they had to go out to play football.” Liang Feng used “expediency” to describe the current situation. He believes that the annual salary of a Super 3 player is about hundreds of thousands, which is not even as good as some people’s income from playing basketball. However, players are still willing to come to the Super 3 League just for the sake of being on the professional field.
The good thing is that the success of the Paris Olympics has brought more attention to three-person basketball. Zhu Yuanbo mentioned that some of the games they participated in abroad would still be watched by many people even if they were broadcast live in the middle of the night. “After we complete this matter this year, we can also show everyone that China still has a three-person basketball project. I feel that this is of greater significance.”
▲The 2023 Wuhan City Three-person Basketball Game will be held in Yellow Crane Tower Park.
Although the league’s popularity is far from what Liang Feng expected, he feels it is excusable. “The team can support itself. This is a basic requirement for a professional club. Content, video dissemination, e-commerce team establishment, player selection mechanism and system, I think they all need to continue to improve.” After doing these things well, Under the premise, Liang Feng gave Guangzhou Yuepao Leopard Cat 5 years to realize the requirements.
From the streets to the Olympics, from grassroots to professional, three-person basketball is undergoing an unprecedented transformation. “I think this is a big gold mine that is very close to young people, so we still need to work together to maintain its game rules and do better content dissemination.” Liang Feng believes that the Super Three League is only two years old, and everything has changed. Just started.
Of course, so does three-person basketball.
Statement: This article was originally created by Lanxiong Sports. Please indicate www.lanxiongsports.com when reprinting.
2024-01-01 17:42:26
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