Who are the top 25 richest NFL players in the world as of 2023?

USA Basketball Has Unveiled The 3x3 Men's Team That Will Be Headed To The Paris Olympics

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Exciting news has emerged today with USA Basketball announcing their roster for the 3v3 basketball team that will be competing in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

The four-man team consists of Cheyenne Mountain Alum Canyon Barry, Jimmer Fredette, Kareem Maddox, and Dylan Travis.

USA Basketball

This team was chosen from a group of 16 athletes who competed against each other in training camps located in Colorado Springs.

Canyon Barry a Colorado Springs native, and Cheyenne Mountain alum returned to Colorado Springs in 2023 to pursue the 3x3 National team competing in the Paris Games. After a successful Division I college career and a stint in the NBA G-League, Barry began playing 3x3 and fell in love with it.

WATCH: Canyon Barry returns to Colorado Springs to make men's national team

Barry is no stranger to the 3x3 scene, representing Team USA in FIBA 3x3 World Cups winning silver in 2023, and gold in 2019, two FIBA 3x3 Men's AmeriCups winning the most valuable player award and gold in 2022, and gold in 2021, Barry also participated one Pan American Games winning gold with his team in 2023.

"We are very excited and proud to announce the first USA Basketball 3x3 Men's National Team that will compete at the Olympics," said Jay Demings, USA Basketball 3x3 national team director and member of the USA Basketball 3x3 men's selection committee. "These four athletes have impressive USA Basketball competitive results and have been tremendous representatives of our country. We appreciate all the athletes that attended training camp to compete for a spot on the roster."

While new to the Olympics scene, the quartet has a history together, competing in several tournaments together dating back to 2022 where they won the gold medal at the FIBA 3x3 Men's AmeriCup. Following their success at that tournament, they won the gold medal at the 2023 Pan American Games and a silver medal at the 2023 FIBA 3x3 World Cup.

During the 2023 FIBA 3x3 Men's World Tour, the four found similar success finishing in the top three four times, and that included becoming the first American team to win a world tour event since 2019.

While the team's announcement is extremely exciting, the team will require a sturdy foundation to tether them down in those hectic moments that sports so often throw at us. That foundation will consist of Joe Lewandowski and James Fraschilla. Lewandowski will assume the role of head coach, a position he has been in since 2014, and will be joined by assistant coach Fraschilla.

The team will have one more opportunity to get their legs underneath them at a training camp held in Phoenix where the team will go to battle against the 3x3 team of Puerto Rico. The game will be played during the halftime of the second semifinal game of the NCAA's Men's March Madness Tournament.

The day after on Sunday, they will host an open practice and autograph session at the Men's Final Four Fan Fest.

Due to the success of the team in FIBA's world rankings system, the team has was awarded an automatic qualification for the tournament, and will not have to take place in the 2024 Olympic Qualifying Tournaments.

USA Basketball

The fearsome foursome will be eagerly awaiting their opportunity to take the Olympic challenge head-on, and will be looking to bring home some silverware for the United States.____

News Tips

What should KOAA5 cover? Is there a story, topic, or issue we should revisit? Have a story you believe should make the light of day? Let our Newsroom know with the contact form below.

____Watch KOAA News5 on your time, anytime with our free streaming app available for your Roku, FireTV, AppleTV and Android TV. Just search KOAA News5, download and start watching.

Copyright 2024 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Inside Joel Embiid's Olympics Decision And Why Team France's 'dream' Is Far From Reality

PARIS — Jean-Pierre Siutat's sixth-floor office at the French Basketball Federation is a 30-minute walk from Accor Arena, the 16,000-seat Parisian venue where the Olympic medal round will play out this summer.

Siutat, 65, has been president of French basketball since 2010. You can see Chinatown and the River Seine from his corner office suite, which is adorned with pictures and memorabilia from the considerable success he has enjoyed with Les Bleus (as the French men's national team is known).

But if he is to achieve his career goal, it will happen on Aug. 10, 2024, in the arena just 1.1 miles from his office. That's the date for the men's basketball gold-medal game, which France has never won.

"I try to build the team to make a result in the Olympic Games here," Siutat says, waving his hand toward the Paris viewable from his window, accentuating how important it is to him and to the French federation to build the best team possible for the Olympics his country is hosting.

From the summer of 2019 to the summer of 2022, Siutat and Team France were riding considerable momentum.

The French stunned USA Basketball in the 2019 FIBA World Cup quarterfinals in China, defeating the Americans by 10 behind huge performances from NBA mainstays Rudy Gobert (21 points, 16 rebounds) and Evan Fournier (22 points, four 3s). The French finished third overall at the event, behind champion Spain and second-place Argentina.

At the next major international tournament, the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, France beat the USA again, this time in Game 1 of pool play, with another unstoppable performance from Fournier (28 points). The two countries met again for the gold medal, and if not for a Herculean closing performance by American superstar Kevin Durant, the U.S. May not have escaped with a five-point win and its fourth consecutive Olympic title.

Siutat, with former NBA champion Boris Diaw as general manager for the French men's team, had set the target of peaking in Paris. They knew the team they would field to host the Olympics would include NBAers Fournier, Gobert and Nicolas Batum, as well as accomplished European players Nando De Colo, Guerschon Yabusele and Vincent Poirier.

Beyond those veterans, Siutat and Diaw were anticipating the arrival of 7-foot teenage sensation Victor Wembanyama, a rising star at the time who would, in all likelihood, have his NBA rookie season complete before the Paris Games.

But there was a wild card, another 7-footer with such a rare and awesome set of skills that, if added to the already impressive pool of French talent and experience, would have cemented Les Bleus as a favorite to win gold in its arena on the Seine.

Joel Embiid was interested in playing for France. To do so, Embiid needed a French passport.

Siutat made sure he got one.

And then things fell apart.

Embiid never lived in France. He was born March 16, 1994, in Yaounde, Cameroon, and speaks fluent French, an official language of his native country. When he was 16, he moved to the U.S. And has been there ever since.

When the idea of Embiid playing for France was first introduced into the public domain, way back in 2018, he told the French newspaper L'Équipe that if he ever played in FIBA, his first choice would be for Cameroon, but he cited the myriad financial and governing issues that complicated playing for his home country.

"My native country (Cameroon), France and the United States are my current options," Embiid said then. "I just want good management."

To this day, Embiid insists he never told Team France anything much different than the quote he gave to the French newspaper six years ago, up until the moment in October when he chose Team USA over Les Bleus for the Paris Olympics.

Siutat and Diaw are adamant that Embiid told them on multiple occasions during the 2021-22 NBA season that he wanted to play for France.

"Joel came to us and said that he wanted to play international basketball, he said he wanted to win, and he said he wanted to play for France and he wanted to win with France," Diaw told The Athletic. "So we listened to him."

Siutat said he, Diaw and Embiid met twice, first over drinks in Orlando, Fla., and then in March 2022 at a steak restaurant in Philadelphia. At both meetings, the two sides expressed their interest in a partnership of some kind. Embiid does not dispute this, though, through a spokesman, he said Siutat and Diaw asked him to play for them at the Olympics, whereas the two French officials say they didn't seek him out — they were instead acting on his conveyed interest, and they said they were talking about Embiid joining the team well before the Olympics.

For Embiid to play for France, first, he would need to become a French citizen — which is not necessarily an easy thing to do. Typically citizenship is granted to foreigners living in France for two or five years (depending on what they were doing while they lived there), foreigners who have parents or a spouse who is French or foreigners who were adopted by French parents.

None of these criteria fit Embiid.

"He said, yes, I want to (play), make the paper," Siutat said, referring to the passport. "So I make the job, with the help of the government, to get a passport for him and for his son. And all the time, he said, 'I want to play for the national team of France.'"

A spokesman for Embiid said the seven-time All-Star disputes Siutat's characterization of that conversation, saying he did not ask for a passport — it was something the French officials pursued on their own.

"So many countries used to do it. We don't do this," Siutat said. "For Joel, this is only a decision because he can help the national team to get the medal. This is the only reason for him to get the passport."

Siutat's point: He would not have gone as far as he did for Embiid to become a French citizen if he didn't think Embiid was intending to play for Team France.

The process began in May 2022. Siutat said he arranged for a French diplomat working at the embassy in Washington, D.C. To meet with Embiid in Philadelphia for a formal interview. Philippe Étienne, the French ambassador to the U.S. At the time, confirmed in an email that one of his colleagues flew to Philadelphia to meet with the 76ers superstar.

Diaw, in explaining the French naturalization process for Embiid, who, again, had no residency nor any direct French heritage, said applicants must demonstrate why they should gain citizenship, through an exceptional, unique service to France. The nation of nearly 68 million people didn't happen to have a 7-footer with an NBA career scoring average of nearly 28.0 points per game.

"When the government asked us, 'Would it be good to have this guy? Can he bring something for France? Can he bring something for the country? Would it be good for the country?' Yeah, we said yes," Diaw said. "That's how he got it."

On July 5, 2022, written on page 55 of the Official Journal of the French Republic, was: "Joel Hans Embiid, born March 16, 1994, in Yaoundé, is now officially the holder of a French passport, under article 21.19 paragraph 6 of the Civil Code which provides that nationality can be granted to "a foreigner […] whose naturalization is of exceptional interest."

But that "exceptional interest" never materialized for France.

The European championship, known as EuroBasket, was in September 2022, and when the French officials and Embiid began discussing a passport the previous spring, Team France wanted Embiid in the fold for that. Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Dončić were among the NBA stars playing for their respective home countries.

But after the effort to get Embiid a passport was underway, Embiid had surgery to repair a torn ligament in his thumb, shortly after the Sixers lost in the 2022 NBA playoffs. He, therefore, was out for EuroBasket.

"He was injured so we said, 'OK, don't worry,'" Siutat said.

French officials should have been worried.

While Team France was on its way to a runner-up finish at EuroBasket in Berlin without Embiid that September, he was at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, swearing an oath of citizenship in the United States.

"We asked him then if he still was with us. He was like, 'Yes, I still want to play for France,'" Diaw told The Athletic. "But then he didn't commit."

With the 2022-23 NBA season underway, Grant Hill found his way to Embiid. Hill, of course, is Diaw's counterpart on USA Basketball. After Hill's first conversation with Embiid that winter, he told confidants that he wasn't sure Embiid would play for France after all. Hill had confidence that Embiid might even choose to play for Team USA at the Olympics.

One thing Hill was sure of: Embiid wasn't going to play for France or the U.S. At the 2023 FIBA World Cup in southeast Asia; he was getting married.

Meanwhile, that World Cup was a disaster for France.

While France did not need to play well to qualify for the Olympics — host countries receive an automatic bid into the basketball tournament — Les Bleus played so poorly that it was not even close to finishing in the top two among European nations at the Cup (which is what it would normally take to qualify). Not only were the French without Embiid, but Wembanyama chose not to play so he could prepare for his rookie season with the San Antonio Spurs. Lacking the passion and focus that had carried them in China, Tokyo and Berlin, the French failed to get out of pool play.

Team France was on the clock for Paris, and in a September news conference after returning home from the World Cup, Siutat set an Oct. 10 deadline for Embiid. He had to know if Embiid was in or out for France.

Embiid, according to his spokesman, was turned off by the pressure Siutat had applied to him and beat the deadline by five days.

On Oct. 5, Hill's 51st birthday, Embiid told him in a face-to-face meeting that he was committing to play for Team USA.

"We learned about it the same day," Siutat said. "It's not so easy to get the passport. We do this because he asked us, and we were very happy to welcome him. At the end of the story, he decided to go to the U.S. Team.

"It's done for me, but you know, you don't have to ask for the passport."

Embiid, who is still recovering from surgery to repair a meniscus tear in February, was not made available to The Athletic by his spokesman. That spokesman said: "We understand they (the French) are disappointed. Joel was clear that he would make a decision when he was ready, and they chose to secure his citizenship in anticipation. Joel loves all three of the countries he calls home and will continue to find ways to support all of them."

Embiid returned to Sixers practice this week and is hopeful to return to action before the start of the postseason, and he still plans to play in the Olympics for Team USA.

The Americans, already winners of the last four Olympic golds, could pair Embiid with the likes of Durant, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and a host of accomplished NBA stars who have won gold medals.

"Center was their weak position the last Olympics, the last two World Cups, if they had one weakness," said Vincent Collet, the longtime Team France coach who spoke with The Athletic in a barren conference room in the basement of the same office building where Siutat works. "With Embiid, for sure it changed everything. Now — no weakness."

Collet coached Wembanyama last season in the French pro league and also for the few games in which Wembanyama played for Team France in FIBA competition. Collet said he had intended to play Gobert (7-1), Wembanyama (7-4) and Embiid, the 7-foot, 2023 NBA MVP and career 34 percent shooter from 3-point range, together as starters.

The challenges presented to the rest of the world, and the inherent advantages France would have had, are obvious.

"It would be easy to make them play together, especially Victor with Joel, because with Victor's mobility, he can really play the three," Collet said. "To have them together on the court would have been very special. That's why I was so disappointed."

Siutat, Diaw and Collet all said the French still expect to medal, but they all consider the U.S., which finished fourth in the World Cup last summer, a heavy favorite.

"Team USA, with him, who can beat you? Come on, nobody," Siutat said. "This is an easy way for him to get an Olympic medal."

GO DEEPER

USA basketball schedules announced for 2024 Olympics

The French roster, like Team USA's, is expected to be announced sometime in the spring. Collet, Siutat and Diaw spent weeks this winter traveling the U.S., spending time with potential (likely) players who will represent France at the Olympics. There are currently 14 French players in the NBA.

Among them: Bilal Coulibaly, a 19-year-old rookie with the Washington Wizards who is 6-8, a 3-and-D wing and, like Wembanyama, did not play for France at the World Cup. He is high on Collet's list; a broken wrist suffered Saturday night ended his regular season but will not require surgery.

Alex Sarr is only 18 years old and is playing for the Perth Wildcats in the National Basketball League. But he is projected by some experts as the top prospect in the 2024 NBA Draft, and at 7-1, he could give the French three 7-footers in the frontcourt, just not the one they envisioned when they thought they had Embiid.

Germany, the defending World Cup champion, is expected to send to Paris another strong team anchored by Dennis Schröder and Franz Wagner. Serbia, runner-up at the World Cup, should have Jokić at the Olympics (he didn't play at the World Cup) and will face the Americans in group play on July 28. Canada, which beat the U.S. For third place at the World Cup, will likely have a roster packed with upper-level NBA talent.

The U.S. Will be favored to win above all of those worthy opponents, and France, as tournament host, will be ranked somewhere among them.

"I don't know if there is a real (English) word to describe … it would be accomplishing my kid dream," Collet said when asked what it would be like to coach France to gold in Paris. "When I was a young kid, I was playing in the Olympic finals against Team USA. But I was winning."

For Collet, Siutat and Team France, realizing that shared dream is a taller task now — by about 7 feet.

(Top photos: Christophe Saidi / SIPA / Associated Press; Brian Babineau, Christophe Archambault / Getty Images; illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic)

US Basketball Teams Learn Draws For Paris Olympics

Olympic basketball draw announced

How about an early matchup in the Olympics where Joel Embid could be guarding Nikola Jokic? Or another early game where it will be a rematch of the women's gold medal game from the Tokyo Olympics?

That will be the case for the U.S. Men's and women's basketball teams after the group draws for the Paris Olympics were announced on Tuesday.

The men's team will have Serbia, ranked No. 4 in the world and featuring Jokic among other NBA players, South Sudan and a to-be-determined team from a qualifier in Puerto Rico in its group.

The women's team will be in a group with Japan — the team the Americans beat in the gold medal game at the Tokyo Olympics — Belgium and Germany.

Both the men's and women's competition will have three groups of four teams, where the top two finishers and the two best third-place teams will advance to the quarterfinals.

The other groups in the men's competition are: Group A — Australia, Canada, Spain qualifier winner, Greece qualifier winner; Group B — Germany, France, Japan, Latvia qualifier winner.

The other groups in the women's competition are: Group A — China, Spain, Serbia, Puerto Rico; Group B — Australia, Canada, France, Nigeria

IOC bans athletes from Russia, Belarus, for opening ceremony parade

Athletes from Russia and Belarus will be allowed to compete in the Paris Olympics, but only as neutral athletes and not as representatives of their countries as a measure the International Olympic Committee imposed following the invasion of Ukraine.

In light of that, the IOC on Tuesday announced that those athletes won't be able to participate in the opening ceremony parade of nations that is set to take place along the Seine River in Paris. It will be the first time in an opening ceremony where athletes of nations will be paraded on boats instead of just walking into a stadium.

The IOC said the athletes from Russian and Belarus could experience the event by watching it as fans, but not be in it. Russian officials were not happy at all with the decision.

"This is, of course, the destruction of the idea of Olympism. This is an infringement on the interests of Olympic athletes," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said to reporters, according to an ESPN article. "Of course, this is absolutely contrary to the entire ideology of the Olympic movement, and this does not paint the IOC in a good light."

Last week, the Russian Olympic Committee said it would not boycott the Paris Games despite the IOC's mandate that their athletes have to compete as neutral competitors. Neutral athletes will be allowed to only compete in individual sports. No teams for Russia or Belarus will be allowed to compete.

Brisbane pivots on stadium plans for 2032

The hosts of the 2032 Summer Olympics — Brisbane, Australia — already have been mired in a debate on what to do for a centerpiece stadium when it's their turn to host the Games.

Organizers originally wanted to take down and rebuild a famed cricket ground and host the opening and closing ceremonies there, but decided to scrap that idea due to concerns of heavy costs.

One alternative was to build a brand-new stadium that would cost more than $2 billion, but that plan was also rejected.

Instead, organizers have settled on upgrading an existing rugby stadium near downtown Brisbane that will host the opening and closing ceremonies. Another existing stadium will be renovated to host the track and field events.

The cost to refurbish the two stadiums is a reported $66 million, which is much more in line with the IOC's new ambition to have more cost-effective Games for host cities.

---