Not makin' it, not takin' it

 Well, this is embarrassing.

No, not Katie Ledecky, who won her all-time eighth Olympic gold medal in swimming in the 1,500 freestyle, and won by such an absurd margin no one else was even in the frame of the overhead camera when she touched. 

No, not the U.S. women's rugby 7s team, who claimed the Americans' first-ever Olympic medal (a bronze) in a sport that's been a surprise hit at the Paris Games. 

And, no, not the U.S. shooting team -- though it was pretty embarrassing that a country as obsessed with calibration as America failed to medal in any firearms discipline,

No, sir. What I'm talking about here is 3-on-3 basketball.

The U.S. team lost again yesterday, this time to Poland. It's 0-2 now in pool play. And how can that be, given that practically EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US grew up playing 3-on-3 in driveways and on playgrounds all over the damn country.

Now?

Now we're over there losing to Poland, for God's sake. Poland. Yeah, like those guys grew up playing make-it-take-it and call-your-own-fouls and leaning against a chain-link fence waiting for winners.

That was us growing up, not them. That was our game. How did it come to this?

Maybe the problem is we've sent a team of players who aren't exactly household names, basketball-wise. Oh, lots of people remember Jimmer Fredette, who starred for BYU an eon or so ago. But who is Kareem Maddox? Or Dylan Travis? And who is Canyon Barry besides Rick Barry's son (and who shoots free throws underhand just like his Pops)?

Man, forget those guys.

What this team needs is my neighbor Gil from across the street, an uncanny dead-of-winter shooter with a stroke muffled by bulky gloves. 

"Son of a bitch!" I'd shout, every time he'd bottom a J.

"No, MARAVICH!" he'd always reply.

What this team needs is Gil and my buddy Dave from down the street and that one kid -- there was always one -- with the matching head-and-wrist-bands. It needs the guy who could make a halfcourt hook shot on a bet. It needs the descendants of Earl "The Goat" Manigault and Herman "The Helicopter" Knowings and Fly Williams and all those other New York playground legends. Hell, it needs Fly Williams now, since the man's still alive.

Then again, maybe it's the setting that's the problem. It's too civilized.

That's because it's an indoor venue with a pristine regulation court and comfy chairs to sit in and nets on the rims. There's also a 12-second shot clock and honest-to-God officials calling honest-to-God fouls.

No wonder we're losing to Poland.

It's because this isn't real 3-on-3, and everyone knows it. Real 3-on-3 is cracked asphalt and netless rims that hang crooked because too many guys have dangled from them after flushing a dunk. It's backboards with dead spots and nowhere to sit and wait on next, unless it's a sorry-ass bench with all the paint weathered off and nailheads poking up through the wood.

Let's get the Poles in that venue and see how they do.

Let's get 'em, say, on my old home court, whose dimensions were as far from regulation as Earth is from the Klingon Empire. That's because it was just a cement slab jutting out from the driveway. It was like playing basketball in a broom closet once you dribbled from the driveway onto the slab. 

But I knew every angle of it, by God. I even knew the exact spot on the right side of the slab where I could spin the ball behind my head, off the backboard and in. Only trick shot I ever mastered.

Yeah, boy. Let's see the Yanks take on the world from 3029 Castle Drive instead of La Concorde in Paris.

We'll even let 'em take the ball out first.