It used to conjure up images of kids in homemade jerseys, outdoor courts with the sun beating down on hot pavement, and players past their prime with sore knees and creaking joints not capable of running full court.

Maybe it was something you did to fill a weekend or to help stay in shape for 5-on-5. Or maybe, you took your kids to a tournament, in hopes of tiring them out on a summer day.

Years ago, it was always an offshoot, never the main event. But that is no longer true.

Whatever your notions of 3-on-3 basketball are, get rid of them.

This isn’t your mother’s 3-on-3.

The sport is sleeker, more exciting and more well-known. It also has a different name. At the professional and Olympic levels, this type of basketball is referred to as “3×3” or, if you’re really in on the lingo, just “3x.”

Whatever you call it, this brand of basketball is on the rise. And with the United States women’s 3×3 team set to take Tokyo in pursuit of a gold medal, the momentum has only begun.

Of course, those notions of what 3-on-3 basketball is didn’t come out of nowhere, and neither did 3×3.

The world of 3-on-3 serves as a foundation for the more elite, streamlined version of the game. But while the sport has evolved into something bigger, the roots are still there, growing in their own ways.

Take Spokane, Wash., for example. It’s home to over 200,000 people, Gonzaga University and, every summer, the world’s largest 3-on-3 tournament.

For the last 31 years, downtown Spokane has closed streets and set up outdoor courts so that upwards of 20,000 people can play 3-on-3 basketball.

Executive Director, and former Gonzaga basketball player, Matt Santangelo has been in charge of Hoopfest for the last seven years. The tournament is loosely based on the Gus Macker model in the Midwest, which was founded by Scott McNeal in his parents’ driveway in Lowell, Mich.

When Hoopfest began, the goal was to bring the tradition of 3-on-3 to Washington.

And while the tournament has required meaningful dedication and resources from the Hoopfest staff, the organizers aren’t surprised that one of Spokane’s biggest money-making events is based around 3-on-3.

“I think it just makes the sport so much more accessible, for lack of a better term,” Santangelo said. “Just the nature of 3-on-3, it is a great way to learn the game.

“There are so many different levels to play at. You might be playing at the Olympic level, you might be playing at the professional level, you might be playing at the event, recreational level. The access to the sport makes it so special.”

Hoopfest has been going strong for three decades. Santangelo and his crew have managed to walk the line between traditional 3-on-3 basketball and the changing landscape of the game.

At the Olympic and professional levels, the game is played according to FIBA rules: with a 12-second shot clock, the first team to score 21 points wins; if neither team gets to 21, the game ends at the 10-minute mark, and the team with the most points is crowned the winner. Baskets count as one or two points, and players must clear the ball to the 3-point line on possession changes.

When Kelsey Plum, Stefanie Dolson, Allisha Gray and Jackie Young — who replaced Katie Lou Samuelson after the latter tested positive for COVID-19 — take the court against France on Saturday, they will be following those rules.

That leads to a fan-friendly, high-intensity brand of basketball.

“I think we are going to introduce people around the world to a new sport that they are going to really like,” Plum said in a press conference after Team USA was announced. “It’s very fun to watch. Very entertaining, very fast-paced, high intensity, very physical.”

KP for the win 😮@Kelseyplum10 x #RoadToTokyo pic.twitter.com/pzaFScRWqp

— USA Basketball 3x3 (@usab3x3) July 15, 2021

At Hoopfest, the rules are a bit different. The games are 25 minutes long and played to 20 points.

Anyone can play: men, women, kids, casual athletes and former pros. And the style of play changes based on who is participating.

“People have taken the 3-on-3 model and put different fingerprints on it and shaped it a little differently,” Santangelo said. “There are different offerings, and I think that is great. There’s not just one way to play basketball, and we get to continue to make this game more accessible.”

Claire Soulek is 10 years removed from her basketball career at Gonzaga University. Back then she was Claire Raap, and a part of the Gonzaga women’s team that made the program’s first (and only) Elite Eight run in 2011 during her senior year.

These days, she doesn’t have much time for basketball between teaching cooking, sewing, health and the occasional P.E. class to middle schoolers in Spokane and caring for her 5-month-old daughter, Kinsley. But she carves some out anyway to volunteer at Hoopfest. It’s a chance to stay connected to the game and the community where she played.

At Gonzaga, Soulek was blessed with a dedicated fan base that, she notes, not every women’s team had, especially a decade ago.

The best part, she said, was the smiling faces of little girls lining up for autographs and photographs after the games.

When they looked at Soulek, they saw their dreams playing out in front of them. And to Soulek, that is the beauty of 3×3. It’s simply another outlet for girls to learn about the game, and to be inspired to pursue basketball.

“The fact that 3-on-3 has gone from grassroots to now the Olympics, you never know what little girl is watching and is going to be like, ‘This is my sport. This is what I love. And you know what? I’m going to work hard to improve my skills and be good at it,’” Soulek said. “It just provides another opportunity for them to go further in the sport of basketball.”

📍 THE OLYMPICS 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/gWBAGnqgh7

— USA Basketball 3x3 (@usab3x3) July 21, 2021

Opportunities are still limited. Both Soulek and Santangelo know that.

Santangelo spent six years playing professional basketball overseas. The gap between players like him and players in the NBA is smaller than you might think.

“The degree of separation between number 6 on an NBA roster and number 10 million is really, really small,” he said. “One through five, those players are really special. And six through 10 million, they are special, too, but they can’t go to the Olympics, or maybe they can’t get paid to play basketball.”

Now, apply that same line of thinking to the WNBA. There are 30 NBA teams and 29 G-League teams. There are just 12 WNBA teams, and a total of 144 roster spots.

All it takes is a quick scan of WNBA headlines to see how many top-caliber players are cut from teams every day. Just this season, Shyla Heal, the No. 8 overall draft pick, was traded and waived.

It’s simple: Within the current landscape of women’s professional basketball, there is more talent than there are roster spots.

That’s one of the first things Alanna McDonald thought of when she was watching the 2017 FIBA 3×3 World Cup in France. Since its debut in 2010 at the Summer Youth Olympics, 3×3 has gained popularity around the world, but the United States wasn’t following the same trajectory.

McDonald isn’t a basketball player. She played volleyball at Brown and professionally overseas. Maybe that’s why she was able to recognize the potential for 3×3 that others missed: She saw it through a volleyball lens, likening it to indoor volleyball and beach volleyball. The two sports coexist at a high level and offer more opportunities for athletes to pursue the sport.

“There is so much talent,” McDonald said. “We want to make sure there are more paid opportunities for women. We want there to be expansion here in the U.S. for these super talented women.”

So, McDonald started researching. She talked to USA Basketball and FIBA. She watched countless 3×3 games and investigated how it would fit into the landscape of women’s basketball in the United States.

Then, she took her idea to Seattle Storm president Alisha Valavanis. The two are connected through Force 10 Sport Management, but when McDonald approached Valavanis at an event, it was essentially an elevator pitch.

Valavanis saw what McDonald had seen, and suddenly McDonald was in board meetings turning her concept into reality.

“We recognized there was already a gap between the opportunities for men and women, and 3×3 is a great game,” Valavanis said. “We wanted to get in on the ground floor and see if we could get it moving on the women’s side.”

In 2019, Force 10 launched the country’s first professional 3×3 women’s basketball team, with the purpose of creating a pipeline and supporting USA Basketball’s mission to qualify for the Olympics. Today, there are four professional women’s 3×3 teams in the United States, sponsored by the Storm and the Chicago Sky.

McDonald hopes that, eventually, every WNBA team will also have a 3×3 team, and she expects the sport to continue to grow at a rapid pace.

“As soon as the Olympics hit, I think there is going to be a lot of interest, a lot of hype,” she said. “That momentum is something we are expecting to sort of take off, because everyone watches the Olympics, and I think fans are really going to love it.”

That’s how movements like this get started. A casual spectator becomes a fan, and then becomes a champion of the sport. Or a little girl sees her heroes playing on TV and develops a life-long passion.

That’s what happened to Stefanie Dolson when she watched the Olympic opening ceremonies as a kid.

“I remember they had, like, these funny caps on,” she said. “And it just looked like an amazing opportunity. And that really sparked my interest.”

Now, Dolson and the rest of the USA 3×3 team will be that inspiration for someone else.

The sport of 3-on-3 basketball is going through an incredible shift. From grassroots to gold medals, the different branches of the game continue to influence each other.

In Soulek’s middle school P.E. class, there is an entire unit devoted to 3-on-3 basketball. No doubt the popularity of the sport at a global and professional level is trickling back down to kids. But if you think about it, it’s not a true trickle-down effect, but rather a full-circle moment.

Because let’s not forget where this all began. In driveways, with kids and their friends, a hoop and a ball.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.