Basketball has always been my favorite sport and growing up, I realized that if I was going to have a chance to play (most of my coaches thought that I sucked – the burden of being a late bloomer), I needed to be good at defense. Honestly, this is the one area of basketball where effort is more important than talent. So I’m really excited to see 3 on 3 Basketball (our second first time event) because there is no place to hide out there. No “defense is what I do while waiting for someone to pass me the ball”. If the player you’re guarding scores every time they get the ball, you are going to lose no matter how skilled the other 2 players on your team are.
Basketball is one of our few night events, starting at 9:30 PM, so we have plenty of time today. Beth has made plans to go to the Eiffel Tower. Sean is a little better, but not good enough to go with us. We take the Metro line 6 to a station called Bir-Hakeim and then have a short walk to the Eiffel Tower. Along the way, we pass Japan House. Many of the Olympic committees have establishments where they can educate visitors about their countries (to get them to visit) or to cater to wealthy donors, for example by allowing them to take selfies with medal winners. Japan House is more about spectator education, so it doesn’t cost much to enter. It might have been fun, but we don’t have enough time. Here is the view in front of us:
The Eiffel Tower, designed by Gustave Eiffel, was
built for the Paris World Fair of 1889. Like the Centre Pompidou, it was not an
initial success. In particular, it was derided by artists and intellectuals.
But now it is maybe the top French cultural icon. We have tickets that will
take us all the way to the top observation desk at 906 ft. I have no intention
of going to the top, but getting those tickets come with a free glass of
champaign at the lower observation desk.
Security is very similar to that at airports – I have
to take off my pin vest, pin hat and belt. While I’m in line, a guy in the
parallel line said that he’d like to trade. He’s a large black guy from
England. He said that his wife had volunteered at London 2012 and had
experienced pin trades, but he says that this will be his first trade. He has
one pin which he just bought at the Paris 2024 show. I told him that I will
trade him two of my pins for his pin so that he has more to trade. I clearly
gave him too many choices as we are almost at the front of the elevator line
before he decides what he wants. But he is happy that he asked to trade and I’m
happy that his first experience was positive.
Elevator is not exactly the right word. These are sort of like cog railroad cars. They have an upper and lower section, go up along the legs of the Eiffel Tower at about a 45-degree angle until they get to the central part of the Tower, then they go straight up. We get off at the lower observation desk at 377 ft. Beth goes to get our champaign while I take pictures:
The last picture is the beach volleyball venue at the
Champ de Mars. I’m not very excited about beach volleyball, but the venue is
stunning. Drinking champaign with these sites and without triggering my fear of
heights is really a good thing!
On the Metro on the way home, I have one of those
experiences that are why I’m wearing 15 lbs of pins on my vest and hat. A woman
had been looking at me for several stops and when the car empties out a little,
she comes over and says she really likes my pins and asks me where I got them.
I laugh and tell her that this is our 14th Olympics, and I just end
up with a few more each Olympics. She tells us that she is currently living in
Paris and asks where we are from. We tell her that we live in California but grew
up on the East Coast. She asks where. I tell her that I grew up in Ipswich. She
laughs and says that she grew up in Lawrence. I blow her away when I tell her
that I was born in Lawrence. What are the chances that two people from the same
town on another continent would run into each other here?! She says that she thought about whether to take a chance and speak with me and now was so happy that she did. We get to our stop and wish her a bonne journée as we get off the train. When we get home, we are happy to find out that Sean is
feeling well enough to go to the game.
The 3x3 basketball venue is located on the Place de la
Concorde – one of the most famous places in Paris. It is situated midway
between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. We are early so we decide to try to
get a view of the Arc de Triomphe or at least the Champs Élysées which runs
between the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe. Unfortunately, there
are a lot of Olympic venues in this area, so it is not clear which way we have
to walk even though Google maps say that it is close. We walk for a mile and
realize that it is going to take at least another mile before we are able to
find a way around the security perimeters. We do find the Great Britain house. Team
GB House is one of the houses that caters to their wealthy donors, and it costs
a lot to get in. Getting a selfie with an athlete is not worth the price to us.
On the way back to the venue, we see many showrooms for famous consumer brands
and galleries. Interestingly, most of them don’t seem to have any customers
inside and I’m wondering how much it costs to lease such high-profile locations
and how many customers they actually have to have in order to be profitable. My
credit card is getting hot just walking near them!
On our entry to the venue, we get our best view of the Egyptian obelisk:
This obelisk is one of a pair that used to sit on
either side of the temple in Luxor and that were carved for Egyptian Pharoh
Ramses II more than 3,000 years ago. It was a gift to King Louis-Phillipe from
the King of Egypt Wali Mohammad Ali in 1829. Mohammad Ali actually gave both
obelisks to France, but the matching one was heavier and could not be moved to
France at the time, so it stayed in Egypt. It was not until 1981 when France
returned the title for the 2nd obelisk back to Egypt.
This is a multipurpose venue with skateboarding, breaking (break dancing) and BMX freestyle being contested here in addition to 3x3 basketball. This is one of the events where we were not able to get 3 seats together, so Sean goes off to his seat at the top of the stadium and we go a little farther down. In 3x3 basketball, the game lasts 10 minutes or until a team reaches 21 points, and there is a 12-second shot clock. There are 3 players (obviously) on a team with one substitute. A shot outside the arc (3-pt shot in standard basketball) counts for 2 points and anything else counts for 1 point. If you are on defense and you get a rebound or a steal, you have to take the ball outside the arc before going on offense. A shooting foul results in one free throw if you are inside the arc and two free throws if you are outside the arc. If a team commits more than 6 fouls, the other team gets two free throws for each additional foul.
Tonight, we are watching play-in games, meaning if you win, you go to the semifinals and if you lose, you go home. The first game is Lithuania versus Poland. Neither team shot over 20% from beyond the arc, but that didn’t stop them from trying. In the end, Lithuania advanced 21-15 because they shot the ball slightly better, and Poland committed more fouls leading to free throws. But it was the second game that most people were here to see: Serbia versus France. I can’t tell you that I saw most of the game because every time that France did something good, everyone stood up. The rows were really close together which made it tough for us to keep standing up and sitting down so we just tried to watch the game in-between the people in front of us. But it was easy to tell who won, France was noticeably better shooting from beyond the arc and beat Serbia 22-19. Here are some pictures:
Notice the picture with the Dutch fans and all of the
French flags. The Paris 2024 organizers decided to create fan zones at every
venue, usually in areas that are frequently going to be on camera. They told
spectators in advance if their assigned seats were in a fan zone as you were
expected to be “enthusiastic” during the event. Our interpretation was that
they were looking for people to stand during the whole time and hopefully be a
little crazy. Fortunately, we were not assigned any tickets in fan zones
Due to the crowds, we had some trouble meeting up with Sean after the game with us waiting just inside the security perimeter while he was waiting just outside it. But eventually, we found each other and made it back to the Metro for the ride home. Along the way, we searched the vending machines on the Metro platforms for Powerade but could not find any. Steps for the day: 14,292.
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