Paris 2024 - Day 19 (August 4th) - Men's 3x3 Basketball

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 14^th 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 2^nd 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.

Rio 2016 - Day 8 (August 13)

Today we are off to men's basketball at the Barra Olympic Park. It is amazing to realize that this will be our last visit to the park. But as the game does not start until 7 pm we've got plenty of time to do something else - like eat. We've been trying to make reservations at one of the better restaurants in Ipenema called Zazá Bistrô Tropical. We have been completely unsuccessful getting a table in the evening (which probably means it is as good as we think it is), but were able to get one for lunch. The restaurant is about 3 blocks from our hotel and about a block from the beach. It looks quite unusual from the outside:

Inside is crammed with many more tables that one would imagine fitting inside this building. We go up a narrow (one way traffic only!) circular stairway to a dining room on the second floor. It looks like this:

(pictures gratefully taken from Zaza's website: Zaza bistro tropical) I am at a loss to describe the style of this place. It is a little hard to see, but we're seated at low tables on a floor that looks like long AstroTurf trying to mimic a lawn. There are all of these decorations on the walls and hanging from the ceiling and quotes in French on some of the walls. Let's call this style French Hippie!

We start with an appetizer of what looks like potato chips made out of taro, manioc and casaba. For the main course, Sean and I have grilled white fish over roasted palm hearts, banana puree and lemon curry velouté (that's a traditional french sauce for the non-foodies [like me!] in the audience). Beth has organic chicken curry with vegetables, mushrooms, lemon grass, and bananas with ginger flavored coconut milk. Sean passes on another chance for alcohol and orders a sort of fruit version of a tequila sunrise with layers of passion fruit, mango and orange juices. Sean must be reading my mind (or we are way more similar than I thought) because he also orders the same desert as I do: devil's cake souffle with Sicilian lemon sorbet and orange raspberries. Beth has a banana brûlée. It is all awesome! The only trouble Beth and I have are trying to stand up afterwards without stepping on people at the nearby tables.

We decide that since we have time to kill, we might as well kill it at the Olympic park rather than sitting in our hotel room. We pick up our backpacks and then head off to the Metro. This is the first time we've taken this trip in mid-afternoon and the trains are quite full - most seem to be coming from downtown or the Beach Volleyball venue. There does seem to be more interest in my pins and I do give away a few, but no one has anything to trade. At the end of the Metro line, we switch to a bus for the rest of the ride to the Olympic part. There is an older couple from the US (Virginia) in the seats in front of ours. They take a look at the pins and ask how many Olympics we've been to and we give them the whole story. Then we ask what brings them to Rio. They tell us that their son, Craig Parnam, is the head coach of the US women's hockey (field) team. They are really excited because the US team is 3-0 going into their match with world #2 ranked Great Britain this evening. They have already knocked off world #3 ranked Argentina and world #4 ranked Australia in this tournament. This is a huge turnaround for US team that finished 8th in Beijing and 12th in London so they are justifiably proud of their son and the job that he has done. They hand us a couple of US field hockey federation pins as we are getting off the bus and we wish them good luck in tonight's match.

After wandering around for a few minutes, we decide to visit the Samsung hospitality center - mostly because of the sign showing that they have a series of Olympic sport pins designed to look like cellphones that they are giving away. Free pins - count me in! After a fairly short wait in line, we go in and find that in order to get the pins, we have to sit through sales pitches on all of the various Samsung products. Bummer! No pin is worth that. However, there is an area that is demonstrating the virtual reality goggles that work with Samsung phones. The area is a sort of stadium with the kind of chairs that you would find on a roller coaster. They have a number of perky young sales people that explain in various languages how to buckle yourselves into the chairs (because they move!) and how to put on the goggles. These goggles don't fit easily over our glasses so it takes some doing to adjust the focus so that we can see. There are two videos. The first puts you in the place of athletes competing in Olympic events like trampoline, platform diving, boxing and fencing. I'm not sure I would say that it is the same as being there, but I can definitely see the potential. The second video was a ride on one of Sean and Beth's favorite roller coasters at Magic Mountain in Southern California called Tatsu. This is one of those coasters where your seat is held from above and there is nothing under your feet, and that rotates forward (so you are lying on your belly during the ride). I didn't feel the same fear of heights that I get on the real deal, but otherwise, the sense of motion that you get during turns and loops feels quite authentic. It must have gone over well with Beth and Sean because they both look like they are ready to do it again. Fortunately for me, there is a long line waiting so we have to leave.

The Olympic superstore is right next door so we hop into that line to go get some more Olympic swag. The line is a lot longer than the last time so I get a chance to play one of my favorite queue games. We keep passing the same people over and over as the line loops back and forth and I am on the lookout for people, but especially little kids, who are checking out my pins. If they are still paying attention the second time we pass, I hand them a pin. I'm able to do this 3 or 4 times before we finally get into the store. Sean and Beth head off to get shirts and I go over to look at the pins. This time I am concentrating on sport pins, preferably with mascots because I know that I'll be able to easily trade them at future Olympics. But I'm surprised at how many designs are already out-of-stock halfway through the Olympics. I guess that means that the Brazilians are starting to get interested in pins. Getting out of the store takes nearly as long as getting in and I have plenty of time to study what sorts of things people are buying - Olympic drink glasses, flip-flops and giant mascot plushies all seem to be popular as do Team Brazil shirts. I can only imagine how many thousands of dollars are being rung up every minute! Certainly more than all of the residents of a single favela make in a year. While some of this money does go to the Rio Olympic organizing committee to partially offset their spending, the majority of it goes right back to the multinational Olympic sponsors. This will be one of the tragedies of these Games - how much money was spent by Brazil to organize the Olympics that had no benefit at all for the majority of Brazilians. This is really a challenge for the whole Olympic movement. The costs to host the games are now so high that fewer and fewer cities or countries are willing to bid. Unless changes are made to reign in costs, it may come down to the same 3 or 4 cities in wealthy countries hosting the games over and over again. That would be a shame.

We still have another couple hours or so to kill before the gates open for our game at the Carioca 1 arena so we wander around and look at some of the other venues. Here is the swimming stadium:

This stadium is at least one attempt to keep costs down. After the games, it will be completely disassembled. It would have been nice for an Olympic legacy to keep the pool and just get rid of the spectator seating, but I don't think that this is going to happen.

There is a live site showing Olympic events fairly close to Carioca 1 so we head over to see what is showing. There is a big crowd watching, of all things, men's team handball. Then we realize that this is because the match is between Egypt and Brazil. While Egypt was up 4 goals in the first half, most of the game has been a real nail-biter. When Egypt's Ahmed Elahmar scores to make it 27-25 Egypt with 2:41 left, things are looking bad for the Brazilians. However, Joao Da Silva scores with 2:01 left and the crowd erupts. The Brazilians steal the ball from Egypt and go in on a fast break, but the Egyptian goal keeper makes the save. The Egyptians can't retrieve the rebound and Haniel Langaro scores for Brazil to tie the score at 27-27 with 1:18 left. Egypt takes a timeout to regroup and once play resumes, they work the ball to Elahmar for a shot with 16 seconds left. Brazilian goalie Maik Dos Santos makes a great save and it sounds in the Olympic park like we are at the game, there were that many people yelling. Brazil calls time out to discuss strategy, but their last shot was blocked and the game ends in a tie. For the Brazilians, a tie is almost as good as a win because their record of 2-1-1 will probably be good enough to qualify for the medal round even if they lose to Sweden in their last match in preliminary play.

By the time we get over to Carioca 1, there is already a big crowd outside. There are no signs outside so it takes us a while to figure out where the security line starts. It is a long line, but it moves pretty quickly. Since it is dinner time, we're eating stadium food again. Sean decides what he wants and gets into one food line while Beth and I go looking for something else. When we all find our seats, we notice that there are a lot of Lithuanian fans here for their game against Spain:

We've been aware of how fanatical Lithuanian basketball fans are for more than 20 years since Golden State Warrior star Sarunas Marciulionis (recently inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame) was the one of the top players for Lithuania and Warriors assistant coach Donn Nelson was the Lithuanian team coach. Somewhere, I still have a Lithuania Grateful Dead fundraising t-shirt from that time. The Lithuanian fans are fired up because they are 3-0 going into this match with wins against Brazil, Nigeria and Argentina. Spain, who were thought to be a medal contender with their 4 NBA players, are in a much different situation. They lost their first two games by a total of 3 points to Croatia and Brazil before beating Nigeria. They have to win this game to have a shot at the medal round.

It is clear from the opening tip that Spain had received the message loud and clear. Two three-point field goals and two layups for Spain combined with 1 for 5 shooting and two turnovers for Lithuania gave Spain a 10-2 lead with only three and a half minutes gone. Lithuania tried to take advantage of their small height advantage by forcing the ball inside, but have real problems getting good looks due to the defense from Spanish center and NBA player, 2.15 m (7'1") Pau Gasol:

Not getting anywhere inside, Lithuania started taking almost nothing by three point shots:

like this one from "small" forward (at 2.04 m (6'8")) Mindaugas Kuzminskas. This strategy didn't work very well either as they made only one of their first four tries and Lithuania found itself down 26-11 at the end of the first period. Things didn't get much better in the second period when Lithuania missed six of eight three pointers. On the other end, it seemed like Spain was shooting mostly layups, but managed to only tack on another four points to their lead; 48-29 at the half.

With the game still looking likely to become a blow-out, I pay more attention to the halftime entertainment than usual. First we have a person in a plastic mascot suit:

This is Vinicius and is supposed to be a cross between a bunch of Brazilian animals. The name comes from Brazilian musician Vinicius de Moraes and is supposed to represent the diversity of the Brazilian people and culture, as well as its exuberant nature (or so says the Rio Olympic website). We've seen a lot of different mascots over the years ranging from the more or less real animals (arctic hare, snow leopard and bear) from Sochi to the what-the-heck is this thing Izzy from Atlanta. I tend to prefer the symbolic mascots so I'm quite happy with Vinicius. But what I really want to know right now is how does the person in the suit keep from roasting in this costume? There is no refrigeration unit and they have to do a little dance and wave to the kids. I guess they've just timed how long a person can physically stand being in this costume and then make sure that their performance time is less than that. But I can imagine the handlers rushing to get the performer out of this suit as soon as they are backstage!

The second performance was from a group of Brazilians with a mini-trampoline and no fear of heights. I find myself thinking that basketball could be a lot of fun if you have a 8' vertical leap:

Halftime is when good teams that are trailing make corrections and get back in the game. By this thinking, Lithuania must not be a good team because Spain comes out and blows Lithuania right off the court. They outscore Lithuania 36-16 for the period including three straight three pointers from Gasol (who is now 5 for 5 from beyond the 3-pt arc) and now lead 84-45.

With the final outcome assured, the Brazilian fans, who had been routing for Lithuania, begin looking for other things to entertain themselves. The obvious one is to start making waves - what they call Ola:

The leaders in one section will stand up and yell um, dois, três (1-2-3) and then everyone in the section will stand up and yell Ola and wave their hands over their heads. It doesn't take long before we've got waves going in both the upper and lower bowls. I must confess that I am having so much fun watching the Brazilians, I pay no attention to the rest of the game other than to see whether Spain will reach 100 points and increase their lead to 50 points. They manage to do both. The final score is Spain 109, Lithuania 59. Pau Gasol leads Spain with 23 points on 7 for 9 shooting. Mindaugas Kuzminskas leads Lithuania with 17.

This is the latest that we've been out for an event during this Olympics and while it might be nice to soak up a little more Olympic park atmosphere, we're more interested in beating the crowd to the buses so that we get back to the hotel at a reasonable time. At 9:30 pm, the Brazilians are only just getting warmed up. They'll probably still be in the park long after midnight so we have no problems getting on a bus or the Metro. In fact, we are back in Ipanema early enough that we have time to go visit our favorite gelato place for the 3rd time since we've been here. 

Steps for the day - 13,226