When Kareem Maddox was in Amsterdam with his Team USA 3x3 basketball teammates, working to qualify for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, he visited a crystal store and bought a special rock. As the team started to pull away from the competition, the gemstone became the team's good luck charm.
"Every time anyone mentioned the Olympics, I'd be like, touch the rock. I'd go get it out of my bag and everyone had to touch it, because we weren't going to jinx this thing," Maddox said. "I've been telling myself I'm an Olympian since 2018, so I had to believe that even though it wasn't true (until now). It's a little surreal."
Maddox's journey to the Olympics has been a little surreal, too. Following high school in California, he spent four years at Princeton playing basketball for head coach Sydney Johnson, who taught him how to create something and how to persevere.
"We were really bad my freshman year, and then by my senior year, we were one of the best teams in school history," Maddox said. "It taught me how to build, how to stick with it. … I learned to get through adversity. We learned attention to detail."
While at Princeton, Maddox went from a 6-23 record his freshman year to 25-7 and a berth in the NCAA tournament as a senior. (Photo by J. Meric / Getty Images)
He carried all those things into his life after college, which began in radio and podcast production with several outlets. This included NPR member stations, where he produced a show about venture capital fundraising and served as a host of "All Things Considered." Now his Monday-Friday gig is in personnel and player development with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
But he never gave up on his dream to be an Olympian, and the lessons from college —learned while going from 6-23 his freshman year to 25-7 and a berth in the NCAA tournament as a senior — propelled him to keep working.
When the International Olympic Committee first brought 3x3 basketball to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (held in 2021), Maddox was a member of the U.S. men's team that fell just short of qualifying. This time around, with the help of the mystical rock, he'll be part of the first men's 3x3 team to represent the United States at the Olympics.
It's a sport some people are still getting used to, especially with the long tradition of 5x5 basketball at the Olympics. Maddox said the game also is different to play, requiring other skills and another mindset.
"The conditioning is just so different, so that's really difficult. And it's wrestling, where a lot of the exertion comes from holding off other guys or trying not to be held, and the aerobic is just not as important. I think that's the most difficult part to adjust to," he said. "The other thing is it's better almost to be like a jack of all trades and a master of none. There's not too much room for specializing in any one thing, so you have to be good at all things."
With such a small team, the chemistry also is important. Maddox said he and his teammates — Canyon Barry (former men's basketball student-athlete at the College of Charleson and Florida), Dylan Travis (former men's basketball student-athlete at Florida Southern) and Jimmer Fredette (former men's basketball student-athlete at Brigham Young) — decided to "fake it til they made" it as a team.
"We all came from different places, different walks of life. When we got there, we were like, all right, we're all best friends now, until it became true," Maddox said. "I think there is a genuine connection. Everyone's really easy to be around. No one entered this like, 'Oh, I don't like so-and-so.'"
The teammates did corny things like movie nights that may have felt forced at first but became more natural as they bought into their future as an Olympic team. It helped that some of them played against each other on the pro circuit for a long time, though none of that animosity lingered once they became teammates representing their country.
"Try traveling with someone for 30 hours to Malaysia and not like them," Maddox said.
Maddox and his teammates traveled the world together en route to qualifying for the Paris Games, each tournament an opportunity to gain valuable world ranking points. Only the top eight men's and women's 3x3 teams will compete in Paris.
The top three teams from both the men's and women's International Basketball Federation world rankings automatically earned Olympic spots in November. Rankings are based on the individual points accumulated by each country's top 25 players, so the number of players, their frequency of playing and their results all factor into the decision.
The U.S. men and women 3x3 teams were both ranked second in the world at the end of this period. But to get there, they had to play a lot of weekend tournaments, with a lot of travel. As one of the only Olympians with an actual job outside of training for the Games, Maddox is immersed in 3x3 while still working in the NBA. His Olympic dream has been his full-time job, separate from his actual full-time job, something he says is possible because of the unusual nature of 3x3 qualifications.
"The tournaments happen over the course of a weekend. Even though it's in Mongolia, you have to get there, it takes a couple of days," he said. "But that being said, you can hold a full-time job doing something else. … You just show up in Japan on Friday, play Saturday, Sunday and are back at your desk on Monday. So that's definitely unique to 3x3."
Maddox's next tournament will give him what he's been seeking for more than five years — a shot at an Olympic medal. And his rock from Amsterdam will definitely be there with him, he said:
"I can't leave home without it."
Maddox is joined on the Team USA 3x3 team by Jimmer Fredette, Canyon Barry and Dylan Travis. (Photo by Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
