Basketball has been one of the most high-profile events at the Olympics ever since Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird joined forces on the Dream Team more than 30 years ago.
Yet megastars like LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Victor Wembanyama, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic and Canada’s own Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — plus many of the world’s best women’s players — are playing large chunks of this year’s hoops tournament more than 200 kms from Paris.
Those athletes who wanted to participate in the opening ceremonies (including some like James and Antetokounmpo, who served as flag bearers) had to spend hours on buses or trains to get to Paris.
Some countries, including Canada, opted to skip the opening festivities because they played the next day and prioritized preparations.
That might not have been necessary had the basketball tournament gone on as originally intended.
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Basketball got booted north to Lille, close to France’s border with Belgium, while badminton stuck around in the City of Lights. That’s even though Paris had a basketball-specific stadium, Accor Arena, for the action and Lille’s massive soccer stadium needed to get air conditioning added in the late stages, leading to talks between NBA commissioner Adam Silver and French president Emmanuel Macron, according to the Athletic.
Basketball was moved because pandemic-related cost increases scuttled the building of a new swimming venue and forced some event shuffling, according to the report. That included moving gymnastics to Accor Arena and sending hoops to Lille until the medal round, at which point the games will be played at the Paris venue.
While some events, such as soccer, will take place elsewhere in France, it makes little sense that the first stage of the basketball tournament didn’t happen in Paris.
Additionally, a brand-new, NBA-calibre arena just opened in Paris, Adidas Arena, but badminton and rhythmic gymnastics were placed there.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis told the Athletic the new arena was requested by FIBA for the tournament, but, “it was not offered to us.” The report said officials lobbied to get badminton moved, but found no success.
Team USA booked an entire luxury hotel in Paris for the duration of the tournament, even though the teams will only play a small portion of its games there, even if they compete for gold.