The strategy behind Basketball New Zealand's 3x3 rise

Basketball New Zealand is developing a roster of specialist 3x3 players that play an aggressive, long-range shooting style that the rest of the world struggles to counter.

New Zealand has one of the youngest rosters for the 3x3 2026 World Cup in Poland lead by Aidan Tonge, alongside under 23-year-olds Josh Book, Te Tuhi Lewis and Christian Martin.

The quartet for the week-long tournament in Warsaw in June have played together for more than a year across age-group and senior events, and have picked up the moniker of 'two-point nation' in 3x3 spaces.

Coach Piet van Hasselt said New Zealand's approach was intentional.

From locking in a core group of six players for most of this year's 3x3 tournaments, who will focus on the format, to building consistency with the outside shot.

"If our ambition is to win an Olympic gold medal, it's very hard to win an Olympic gold medal in your second sport," he said of their long-term plans to lure players away from five-a-side.

The 3x3 variant of basketball was an Olympic sport and had "been around seriously for the last 6-7 years", and van Hasselt said New Zealand had found a "gap", where they could execute their point of difference.

"We're trying to be at that leading edge," he said. "We want to try to be innovative and find the gap, so we've got a young team who are fit, that can handle this one-and-a-half days travel that we're about to embark on [to get to the World Cup].

"We see it as a skill as New Zealanders to bring a lot of physicality and it came around from trying to get to 21 as quickly as possible."

In a 3x3 game, winners are the first team to score 21 points or the highest score after 10 minutes.

Points are scored in twos outside the arc and one point from inside.

The team's ability to knock down the deep ball at a high percentage put scoreboard pressure on opposition, van Hasselt said.

"I think that's a really big differentiator than what we've probably had in the past. Now [opposition] have to adjust immediately - it's a really clear, very aggressive style of play.

"We've been developing that through our U23 age group. It's been going reasonably well and now teams are countering us, so we need to have plan B, C and D."

Across the 3x3 Asia Cup tournament, the team drained 26 two-point shots, six more than any other team at the tournament.

Lewis was the Asia Cup Most Valuable Player, and has been touted as one of the code's newest star attractions for his shooting and passing ability to bring knockdown shooters Martin and Book, who has ben playing at college in America, in the game.

Van Hasselt and his players leant on comparisons to other codes, when describing what they did on the outdoor court.

"It's a bit like T20 cricket," he said. "The sport's very aggressive, very fast, but we're swinging for sixes and we're going for the fences.

"We can beat anyone on our day. If we shoot 40 percent from two, we beat everybody.

"We want to know that we have a chance at beating the best teams in the world - the Serbias and Lithuanias, and all these other American teams. Rather than just rocking up to a game, rolling the dice a little bit, we actually have a clear style of play, offence and defence."

Martin referred to 3x3 as a "rugby version of basketball, it's very physical, not many fouls are called" and Tonge borrowed the boxing term of "haymaker" for their flatout scoring approach.

Tonge said the closeknit and consistent roster was also to New Zealand's advantage.

"You see the teams that sometimes chop in and out players, and then you can see how that limits them in some factors, and how the flow of the game goes and the chemistry," he said

"Having the ability to have these other guys that are really committed to our team and our programme, and what we're trying to do, it helps out tremendously to show the results on the court and everything that comes from that."

Tonge will not only fill the role of captain at the World Cup, he will coach the rest of his teammates at an U23 tournament. The whole roster will also be New Zealand's team at the Commonwealth Games.

Coaches can not coach during a game, so players who are oncourt leaders can be vital in the pressure moments.

Honesty was central to the team's communication, Tonge said, as was holding each other accountable.

"I feel really, really blessed that these guys look up to me in the sense of decision-making on the court, but these guys are all very capable in their own aspects and if I need to depend on them for things as well, they definitely can do that. Then they let me know when it's not the right call as well."

Van Hasselt said, not only was 3x3 a "completely different style" to what most players grew up with in five-a-side, but it also required a specific type of player who could "lean into adversity".

"You've got to be adaptable, because it might rain, you might not get a warm-up.

"We played in a shopping mall once and there was no warm-up court. That's why it needs a different sort of personality, a different sort of mindset."

The coach said the playing group would "run through a brick wall", if Tonge asked them to, something they might need to metaphorically do at the World Cup.

The 3x3 Tall Blacks will play Olympic gold medalists Netherlands, Germany, who finished fourth at the last World Cup, China and Japan in Group C.

New Zealand's first game is scheduled for 1 June against the Netherlands at 11.45pm, before taking on Germany in the early hours of the next morning.

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