USA men’s 3×3 basketball forward Kareem Maddox puts in the work to reach Olympics
Andscape at the Olympics is an ongoing series exploring the Black athletes and culture around the 2024 Paris Games.
PARIS – For Kareem Maddox and the struggling USA men’s 3×3 basketball team, their projected road to medal during the Paris Olympics appears likely to be derailed. But for this American, just making it to the Olympics from a unique Ivy League path has made his journey unforgettable.
“The experience has been absolutely beautiful,” Maddox told Andscape. “Enjoying this with my family, having the full support of everyone I’ve worked with at USA Basketball all in one place. I can’t wait to reflect on it when it’s all said and done. But we’re head down, still plugging away.”
Since 2015, Maddox is one of the most successful Americans in the short history of competitive 3×3 basketball, a sport that arrived in the Olympics in 2020.
The Los Angeles native has played for USA in two FIBA 3×3 World Cups, two FIBA 3×3 Men’s AmeriCups and two Pan American Games. Maddox was a member of the USA 3×3 men’s national team that went 3-2 at the 2021 FIBA 3×3 Olympic qualifying tournament. He also is a member of USA Basketball’s 3×3 men’s team along with former NBA guard Jimmer Fredette, Dylan Travis and Canyon Berry. USA, however, was 0-4 with Fredette sidelined by injury entering Friday’s contest against host France.
“Won’t lie, it’s been a rough go on the court,” Maddox said. “The rules and length of the game make it unpredictable enough. Then, factor in everything that has happened outside of that and you can get a tournament that’s like this. The game is the game.
“It’s not over yet. We’re still fighting. I’ve seen crazier things happen. We just got to dig deeper.”
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Maddox was born on Dec. 9, 1989, in Los Angeles to an African American father and Sudanese mother whose father was once the director of the Sudanese boxing federation. Maddox’s father, Alan, has been to several Summer Olympics Games and has volunteered in the media center. Kareem Maddox was able to go to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he dreamed of being an Olympian one day.
Before focusing on basketball, Kareem Maddox grew up participating in other sports like track & field, tennis, water polo and cross country at the urging of his father. Maddox wasn’t a well-known basketball player in Los Angeles while playing for suburban Oak Park High School. The late blooming 6-foot-8 forward didn’t play AAU basketball and wasn’t a sought-after recruit by Division I programs. Alan Maddox, however, believed his son had the talent and the grades to play college basketball at an Ivy League school.
In the summer of 2007, Alan Maddox sent his son to Princeton’s summer elite basketball camp. Then-head coach Joe Scott became enamored of Kareem’s play at the camp and began recruiting him. Penn, Harvard, Yale and Puget Sound showed interest during his senior season, but Kareem Maddox signed a letter of intent to play for Princeton on Feb. 7, 2007.
“I didn’t play AAU or I wasn’t on the recruiting circuit, so no one had heard of me I had no letters,” Kareem Maddox said. “And so, we flew out to New Jersey and just enrolled in Princeton elite camp. I was just like, ‘All right, whatever, this sounds fun.’ So, I played, Joe Scott was the coach and I was just with the other campers. But I played pretty well. I was an athlete and was a good, decent basketball player, but not all that refined probably.
“[Scott] was like, ‘Who are you and where are you going to school next? What is your deal with college? And I was like, ‘Oh no, I don’t have no letters. Don’t know if I’m playing college basketball.’ He was like, ‘Well, can you come here? What are your grades like?’ I was like, ‘They’re good. I have a 3.8, 3.9 [grade point average]. And I don’t know if they’re good enough for Princeton. He’s like, ‘I’ll worry about that. You don’t worry about that.’ And the rest is history.”
Maddox averaged 7.4 points and 4.1 rebounds per game during his career with Princeton from 2007 to 2011. During the 2010-11 season as a senior, the 2011 Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year averaged 14 points, 6.9 rebounds and a team-best 1.7 blocks per game. He also graduated with an English literature degree.
After Princeton, Maddox went on to play professionally in the Netherlands and England for two seasons. In 2013, he retired from basketball and became a news producer for Los Angeles public radio station KCRW. Maddox also hosted NPR’s “All Things Considered,” a show centered on major public affairs.
Maddox began playing competitive 3-on-3 basketball for Ariel Slow and Steady in 2015, which finished fourth at the 2015 USA Basketball 3×3 Nationals. His drive to return to basketball grew after seeing the Cleveland Cavaliers come back from a 3-1 deficit during the 2016 NBA Finals to defeat the Golden State Warriors. He went to Las Vegas during the summer of 2016 and participated in a basketball tryout with overseas teams looking for players. That led to a job playing professionally in Poland during the 2016-17 season after a three-year hiatus.
“I was more surprised when he came out of retirement, decided to go back and play 5-on-5 again in Poland because his broadcast and radio career was going so well,” Alan Maddox said. “I would say I was 50-50 on that. But again, by that time he had a skillset and educational pedigree that would carry him even if that didn’t work or did work. Ultimately it worked out. We’re really happy for him.”
Lars Baron/Getty Images
In 2017, the International Olympic Committee announced that 3×3 basketball would be added to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. That’s when Maddox started to believe that his Olympic dream could come true. In 2018, he earned MVP honors as Ariel Slow and Steady won the 2018 USA Basketball 3×3 Nationals title. It was that title that led to him earning his first spot on USA Basketball’s 3×3 squad as a member of the gold medal winning team in the inaugural 3×3 Pan Am Games in Lima, Peru.
Maddox has had other jobs outside of playing 3×3 basketball over the years, including being in the media. He was a journalist at NPR member stations in Los Angeles and Colorado. He produced daily news magazine shows and hosted “All Things Considered” for a statewide audience at KUNC News. He was a podcast producer for the Spotify acquired Gimlet Media. He also produced a show called “The Pitch,” a real-life look into the venture capital fundraising process.
Maddox didn’t make it to the NBA, but he did become a part of it with the Minnesota Timberwolves. He lives in Minneapolis where he works for the Timberwolves in video, scouting and player development. Maddox was hired by Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly, whose younger brother, Dan, was director of operations for Princeton basketball when Maddox played there.
“I’ll be on the court for warmups and for shoot around and stuff like that,” Maddox said. “Whatever they need. I’ll jump in a drill if I need to. And then I’ll just put together videos for the scouts.”
Maddox was crushed when USA Basketball’s 3×3 team didn’t qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. USA, however, qualified for the Paris Olympics after finishing second in the 2023 FIBA World Cup in Serbia.
“I did have a sense of gratefulness as I was going the last three years working out and training, for being able to do it and staying healthy enough and lucky enough,” Maddox said.
Alan Maddox is a part of a contingent of family members rooting on Kareem Maddox in France. Alan Maddox is hopeful that more children will get involved in sports by watching the Olympics.
“Only so many people are going to be in the major leagues, but everybody can pursue one of the Olympic sports through youth [sports], high school, college, and indeed, professionally in many cases,” Alan Maddox said. “Some of the most amazing people that I meet are athletes that are more amazing in their careers outside of the Olympics. They have amazing careers because again, going back to those disciplines and getting focused and the skill of focusing on something and sticking with it, it’s just a really great thing as far as I’m concerned…
“We’ve seen the work [Kareem has] put in and the discipline and the travel. We were really excited to see that when someone puts so much effort into something, it’s successful. It’s not an easy thing to achieve.”
With or without a medal, this Olympic experience has certainly been a memorable one for Maddox. While most American athletes are staying in the Olympic Village, all of USA Basketball’s teams are staying at a secured hotel in Paris.
That means that Maddox and the USA Basketball 3×3 men’s and women’s teams are staying at the same hotel with NBA stars LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant and WNBA stars A’ja Wilson, Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart, who are members of their respective senior national teams. The Olympic 3×3 competition is also taking place in the heart of Paris at La Concorde, an urban park that was transformed into a temporary open arena also housing BMX freestyle, breaking and skateboarding.
“We just keep a small footprint. And no, no, we’re definitely not trying to get pictures with anyone or any of that,” Maddox said. “We hope we can get some tickets to the final, but we’ll be there watching them.”
The game of basketball has afforded Maddox the opportunity to visit around 25 countries, and he has enjoyed every trip. He will be 38 years old when the Olympics come to Los Angeles in 2028. If USA Basketball still wants him on the roster, he would love to try to win a 3×3 medal on American soil. In the meantime, he plans on continuing with the Timberwolves and starting a nightly podcast.
“I’m going to play as long as it makes sense and as long as I love it and I enjoy it,” Maddox said. “It’s been the biggest blessing. It’s just everything I like to do. It’s travel. It’s alone time on these trips. It’s competing and you only play over the course of a weekend and then you have time to do what you want.
“I’m going to kind of try to milk it for all I can. And at this level, who knows? We’ll see. I think the game is growing and it’ll be harder and harder for a 38-year-old at that point to make it to 2028.”