Just over 12 years after becoming college basketball’s biggest star, Jimmer Fredette found himself in the back of a vehicle in Kosovo driven by a man he barely knew, hurtling deep into the woods of a remote national park.
Let him explain.
Fredette explained that he and his 3-on-3 basketball teammates were in Kosovo for a tournament but had no place to practice. Then they heard about three public courts tucked away in the middle of a national park, dotted with graffiti, with cracks in the sidewalk, but otherwise perfectly usable. So they went.
“This guy drove us over there and we said, ‘Listen, we’ll give you $100 if you stay here to make sure you don’t leave,’” Fredette said during a media roundtable earlier this year. “Because if you leave, we can’t go home.”
Fortunately, Fredette continued, the guy didn’t leave. And everything went well.
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It’s just one of the craziest basketball stories he’s collected — and unique places he’s seen — during a remarkable but unorthodox career.
Over the past 15 years, Fredette has been voted unanimous college basketball player of the year, an NBA lottery pick, an NBA near-death, a Chinese Basketball Association legend — and, most recently and perhaps finally, a 2024 Olympian. After retiring from 5-on-5 basketball in 2021, he has found a second home in the niche world of 3-on-3, where he will lead Team USA in its pool opener Tuesday against Serbia.
“You never know where life is going to take you, right?” Fredette said. “For me, it’s just the way things have happened. There’s no reason for it.”
Fredette’s journey to Paris includes stops on five continents, with tournaments in a wide variety of locations including Mongolia, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and Santiago, Chile. Between his three-on-three travels and professional stints in China and Greece, he estimates he’s visited most of Asia and Europe.
“We call it ‘passport stamp rich,'” he said with a smile. “We’re stamp rich.”
Most basketball fans remember Fredette, now 35, from his days at Brigham Young University. He was not only a quintessential All-American, but also a transformative shooter, becoming something of a cultural phenomenon whose name was recognizable even to casual sports fans. The Sacramento Kings selected him with the 10th overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft, between future NBA All-Stars Kemba Walker and Klay Thompson.
Fredette’s time in the NBA, however, didn’t go as smoothly as his father’s. He spent three seasons in Sacramento before being released, then had brief stints in Chicago and New Orleans. In 2015, Fredette joined the NBA’s D-League. And in late 2016, he left the United States to sign a contract with the Shanghai Sharks.
“I think I was a little ahead of my time,” Fredette said when asked about his NBA career. “I was a long-range shooter in college, which wasn’t really the case in the NBA at that time. I came in with that type of skill set, and if I don’t have that type of green light to be able to do it, you’re taking away half of my skill set.”
In China, Fredette got the green light, and he used it. In his first three seasons with the Sharks, he shot nearly 27 shots per game and averaged over 37 points, with two games in which he scored 70 or more points. Yet after a brief return to the NBA, then to Greece, then to China during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fredette decided he wanted to spend more time with his family and focus on a second career in venture capital.
And that’s where Fran Fraschilla comes in.
In the spring of 2022, the ESPN analyst and former college basketball coach joined USA Basketball as a senior advisor to the men’s 3×3 basketball program, tasked with helping the program rebound from its failure to qualify for the 2021 Olympics. He heard that Fredette had moved away from 5-on-5 basketball and thought 3-on-3 might interest him, offering him a chance to continue playing but with less of a time commitment.
After a two-hour lunch in Denver that summer, Fraschilla said, Fredette was game.
“Jimmer is the epitome of American 3×3,” Fraschilla said in an interview. “He had a great career. He was available because he retired. … He’s really perfect for the sport.”
For Fraschilla, it’s not just that Fredette is “a basketball icon, in many ways,” but also a terrific shooter who is in great shape — the type of profile he believes would translate well to 3-on-3 play, where teams play 21-a-side with few breaks.
“It’s such a different game,” Fredette said. “Obviously, the pace is faster, the clock is fast, you have to be in a different shape. It’s not so vertical, with sprints up and down. It’s more horizontal, with quick bursts.”
It’s also a much more physical game, Fredette said, something he appreciated as a former high school football player.
He also found it offered the kind of balance he was looking for, allowing him to drop his kids off at school, work out and then focus on venture work in the afternoons. He quickly became a key player on Team USA, helping the Americans win a Pan American Games title last year and a runner-up finish at the 2023 FIBA 3×3 World Cup.
“His talent is such that he is, if not the best player on the 3×3 World Tour, at least one of the top three players,” Fraschilla said. “So he’s given USA Basketball a huge boost.”
In return, 3-on-3 basketball has given Fredette an opportunity he thought had long since passed: the Summer Olympics. He knows he took an unorthodox path to get to Paris. And he acknowledged that his life in basketball hasn’t exactly gone as planned. Instead of a 15-year NBA career, he spent the last year traveling to 15 different countries playing 3-on-3 basketball.
When asked if he would consider the nomadic lifestyle he currently leads, Fredette simply replied “no” and laughed.
“I’ve had great times in my career and tough times, like a lot of people in their lives, whether it’s in sports or anything else,” he said. “The most important thing for me is that once one door closes, another one opens. And to be able to go all in.”
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.
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