– …laments the need to play more tournaments in Guyana to boost World Ranking

By Rawle Toney in Miami, Florida
(Compliments: National Sports Commission & Guyana Lottery)

PATRICK Haynes, General Secretary of the Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF), showered Guyana’s male and female teams, with praises for their performance at the FIBA AmeriCup 3X3 tournament, which wrapped up on Sunday at Bayfront Park in Miami, Florida.
Guyana’s male team came from Ryan Stephney, Tyrone Hamid, Travis Burnett, and Timothy Thompson.

Spain-based professional, Joy Brown, along with Jada Mohan and Kesann Charles were the country’s women in action.
“Based on the timing that we (GABF) had, the short period for getting players registered and getting all of the required documents, I think we have performed above expectation” Haynes told Chronicle Sport in an exclusive interview.

Behind a sensational performance from Brown, the Guyanese women were able to top Group C of the qualification round which saw them competing against Jamaica and Guatemala.

Along with Guatemala, Guyana advanced to the tournament’s main draw where they faced Mexico and Chile.

The men’s team, playing in their qualification round against Guatemala and Trinidad and Tobago, narrowly missed out on a spot in the next round.

According to Haynes, “Joy Brown, who was a big spark for the Guyana team, and if not the best female player in the competition; but there’s more work still to be done.”

Though satisfied, the GABF General Secretary said they’re not contented, adding “we will now have to put strategy in place to make sure that (1) we’re not coming into the qualifying draw, but we’re going into the main draw, and we’re able to play with any of these teams. Work needed to play more 3X3 basketball in Guyana, at the club and community level.”

Playing More 3X3 basketball
There has never been a female 3X3 tournament at the senior level in Guyana, with Brown, Mohan and Charles all playing the game’s shortest format for the first time in Miami.

As such, the Guyanese women were ranked 13th, while the men’s side entered as the tournament’s 16th seed.

Haynes reasoned that “one of the things needed to qualify for these events is that the National Federation has to have a national co-ordinator, with access to the back end of the back end, which manages the National team players.”

To help improve Guyana’s FIBA 3X3 ranking, Haynes explained that the GABF will “need to host, the minimum of three events a year, and each event needs to have a minimum of four teams. So, one of the things to get us more points, is to stay active and play regular 3X3 basketball and it’s not just playing the games, but its registering the games and the players and this is now going to gather our points…the more players you have, the more competition you have, your ranking goes up. To get into the main draw, you need to be in the top 12 rank.”

Using 3X3 Popularity
In 2020, Haynes was named on the newly established FIBA 3X3 Commission, where he’s also the lone Caribbean representative on the body that’s chaired by former NBA great, Andrei Kirilenko, from Russia and Uganda’s Ambrose Tashobya as Deputy Chairman.

Exciting, urban, and innovative, 3X3 is inspired by several forms of streetball played worldwide and is considered the world’s number one urban team sport.

It was played successfully for the first time in international competition at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore, and since then has benefited from the launch of a yearly city-based FIBA 3X3 World Tour and national-team FIBA 3X3 World and Continental Cups.
After featuring at the Olympics this year in Japan, the format has seen an instant growth and a high demand for the unique balls and other equipment associated with the game.

Asked if the growing popularity of 3X3 basketball can overshadow the conventional 5-v-5 formant, Haynes is of the opinion that “3X3 is more of a grassroots, where it’s bringing the game to the people and not the people coming to the game. So now, we can use this to identify talent, bring the game to the people from Regions 1 – 10, so I see 3X3 supplementing five-v-five basketball.”

When the curtains came down, it was the USA that took home both the men’s and women’s title, with both teams beating Mexico in the finals.