Beating the buzzer

Is that a streak of gray in Jimmer Fredette ’s hair? It couldn’t be. For the nation of fans he inspired to yell “Jimmer range!” when pulling up for an audacious half-court shot, who saw him earn praise from President Barack Obama and land on the cover of Sports Illustrated, he’s remembered with a brown-haired, curly mop.

The gray disappears when he adjusts himself, the result of a webcam illusion that nevertheless echoes reality: While today’s Jimmer still looks plenty like his younger self, still flashes a toothpaste-commercial smile above an anvil of a chin, that curly mop is buzzed at the sides. It’s thinner than it used to be. His skin creases around his eyes and nose and forehead. Jimmer looks great for 35, no question. But he also looks a long way from 22 and the version of himself that first tasted fame.

Seated in his home office, trophies bracket him on either side — among them, his 2011 Naismith Player of the Year award. A royal blue BYU basketball logo shines on the wall directly behind him. They tell the familiar story of the Jimmer who captivated the nation 13 years ago. Now, he’s ready to tell a new story. The story of who he is, rather than who he was.

“I’m excited to be here with everyone today,” he says in his first remarks since he was named to the U.S. men’s 3-on-3 Olympic basketball team. The turnout over Zoom is relatively small. Three-on-three basketball doesn’t court as much attention as the 5-on-5 squad headlined by Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James. Most American fans don’t even know the team exists, since 2024 will mark its first appearance in the Olympics. But Jimmer — as usual — seems sincere. He is excited to be here, even though he never expected to be. “It’s definitely been a transition to get into this 3-on-3 game, but let me tell you: It’s been a welcome transition,” he says. “It’s been something that has really given me new life.”

The 3-on-3 version of the game is fast-paced, physical and thrilling — the kind of inventive, competitive, first-to-21 basketball people play in parks and gyms around the world. It’s a style that suits Jimmer’s abilities, and with the experience and maturity gained from a successful career overseas, watching him now feels like something familiar and new at once. Like the player who instigated the free-flowing, high-scoring fun of Jimmermania mixed with a seasoned, master craftsman.

At 35 years old, Jimmer might just be playing his best basketball, graying or not. And if he can keep it up through the end of the Paris Games, he could finally reach a milestone that, thus far, has eluded him.

Jimmer Fredette: Adapting to basketball after the NBA

Jimmer doesn’t say much about what went wrong in the NBA. He’s not avoidant — he’s just straightforward, and he doesn’t know the answers. Nor does he have much interest in remembering how it felt. So usually, his family has spoken for him. “It was humiliating for him,” his father told ESPN in 2017. “We thought his momentum at BYU would just continue. And then year one didn’t pan out, year two didn’t pan out. Things slowly got worse,” his wife, Whitney, told Deseret about a year later. “At first it was really hard because he had set such high expectations for his career and he literally didn’t meet any of them.”

Eventually, though, Jimmer set new goals. He adjusted. He adapted and thrived overseas. He earned a shoe deal with Chinese apparel company 361 and tech endorsements. He scored 73 points in one game. He earned the nickname “The Lonely Master” because his skills were so far ahead of everyone else, he was like a god. “He had to reevaluate his dream,” his sister Lindsay said back then. “And he had to come to peace with the fact that there are some things you can’t control. If you don’t do that, you might miss some opportunities that are placed in front of you.”

Which is exactly how he ended up where he is now, with a chance to have his career culminate in one last Jimmermania-esque run — this time with a major title at the end of it. The Washington Post , NBC and The Associated Press have all covered the team’s Olympic pursuits, always with him as the centerpiece. “With the Olympics taking place this year in Paris,” The Washington Post’s Des Bieler wrote in March, “basketball fans will have to set their clocks to … Jimmer Time?”

That story mentions all the key moments in Jimmer’s basketball journey: his stardom at BYU. His NBA struggles. And his three seasons with the Chinese Basketball Association’s Shanghai Sharks. He also briefly played for a Greek club in the EuroLeague, and he technically won the Greek League championship in 2020 by default. The pandemic canceled the season, and the team was declared champions because they were in first place when the season ended. Effectively laid off because the club could no longer afford his contract, Jimmer signed with the Sharks again and went back to China, but this time, strict pandemic lockdown protocols limited him to the arena or his apartment/hotel room, with no visitors and no chance to leave. He didn’t see Whitney and their kids for about seven months. “It was brutal,” he says. “It was absolutely brutal.”

Back at their home in Colorado, Whitney spent those seven months trying to maintain her sanity. It was hard enough when he was overseas in the past, but without having him home at all, and without getting to see him in China, it was unbearable. When he returned, both agreed he needed a break from basketball to figure things out and spend time with her and the kids. In the summer of 2022, he was pondering whether he wanted to return to competitive hoops when he got a call from Fran Fraschilla, a former college coach and ESPN analyst who was helping USA Basketball develop its 3-on-3 program. He asked if Jimmer might be interested in helping the Americans qualify for the Paris Games.

3-on-3 basketball at the Olympics

Many current or former NBA players had been floated as options for the U.S. 3-on-3 squad before, says Canyon Barry, who will play alongside Jimmer this summer. Rumors circulate constantly. But they usually vanish, possibly by design. “It’s a really hard sport to play,” Barry explains, “if you’re still trying to pursue that NBA dream.” The schedule makes it almost impossible. Barry abandoned his own G-League pursuits for 3-on-3. So he was skeptical when he heard Jimmer might be joining up, but Jimmer himself was at a juncture where he wanted something more meaningful. The lone word “Olympics” was enough to convince him. As soon as Fraschilla said that was the goal, he was all in. Soon, he was headed to Miami to play in the 2022 AmeriCup.

“He could die happy. It would mean everything. It would be iconic. Legendary. It’s everything he’s ever wanted.”

After four straight victories, the finals of his very first 3-on-3 tournament pitted Jimmer and his teammates against Puerto Rico. To watch that final game is to watch something very familiar, in a few ways. First, it’s basketball; if you’ve ever watched an NBA or college game on TV, you’ll recognize it right away. But it also operates more like a game you might watch between friends at the park than BYU vs. Utah at the Huntsman Center.

The contests are usually — though not exclusively — played outside. They’re only 10 minutes long, and can end even sooner if one team reaches 21. The shot clock only runs for 12 seconds, so it looks frantic. Every moment is spent trying to find an open look. It follows a half-court, make-it lose-it format, where shots inside the arc are worth 1, and shots outside it are worth 2. And because games are concentrated in a smaller space with fewer players, 3-on-3 requires sweeping competence. You can’t have specialists like in the NBA. The ball is constantly moving between every player on the floor, and if you have a weakness, it’ll get exposed — quickly. “There’s times in 5-on-5 when you can run up and down the court for a three- or four-minute stretch and not touch the ball,” Barry says. “That doesn’t happen in 3-on-3.”

Among Jimmer’s teammates, Barry is probably the most recognizable. His father is NBA Hall-of-Famer Rick Barry, and he was the Southeastern Conference Sixth Man of the Year at Florida in 2017. Dylan Travis played at Florida Southern in the mid-2010s; he helped his team to a Division II national title before playing professionally overseas. And Kareem Maddox was the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year at Princeton in 2011. He also played overseas for a few years. But unlike Jimmer, none of his teammates are full-time professional athletes.

“It’s only three guys out there. There’s nowhere to hide.”

Barry picked up a master’s degree in nuclear engineering at the University of Florida, and since he left the G League to pursue his 3-on-3 dreams, he’s worked in construction sales and, for the last year and a half, as a systems engineer at one of the largest defense contractors in the country. Travis teaches special education at a Nebraska high school. And Maddox spent years working in radio and podcasting, even hosting local editions of NPR’s flagship afternoon news program, “All Things Considered.” Since 2022, he’s worked in the personnel department for the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves. “They’re not NBA guys, with the exception of Jimmer,” Team USA coach Joe Lewandowski observed during the team’s introductory press conference. “These are guys that have a passion for something, and they’re going after it and they’re competing.” In that sense, 3-on-3 basketball is more true to the original, amateur spirit of the Olympics than its more well-known cousin. And Jimmer, though an outlier, likes that.

There are certainly times when he wonders how he got here. “Here” being Olympics qualification and preparation games all over the world, from Chile to Kosovo to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in 100-degree heat, with a handful of hardly interested observers watching. It’s a long way from 19,000 fans in the Marriott Center, and sometimes, he misses that. But from the beginning, he decided that if he was going to do this, he was going to commit himself all the way. The end goal, he told himself, would be worth it. He grew up watching the Olympics. “I was one of those crazy people that watched literally every event,” he says. To get there by playing the game he loves — how could that possibly lead him astray? “I was prepared for it,” he says. “I was ready for it and I was excited about it,” whatever the quirks.

One big, unexpected quirk was the travel. When Fraschilla pitched it, Jimmer and Whitney remember he specifically emphasized that travel wouldn’t be excruciating — a tournament for two or three days, then back home. But when a tournament is in Mongolia, that means two full days for travel alone, plus a few days to adjust to the time zone and to practice (the team’s players are scattered across the country, from Florida to Nebraska to Colorado to Minnesota, so practice before tournaments is vital). And then there’s another tournament in Switzerland, and wouldn’t it just make more sense for him to go straight there? Suddenly he’s been gone 27 days. “It kind of ended up being more than we expected,” Whitney admits. “We just have to make it to Paris.”

To get there, though, Jimmer needed to improve quite a bit. The tournament in Miami was a good start — he sank a game-winning 2-pointer to win gold — but it was just the beginning. Most of all, he couldn’t avoid playing defense anymore. “Jimmer Fredette,” Barry says, “was never put on any team for his defensive abilities.” And in 3-on-3, you have to defend. Jimmer had to evolve. “He’s done an unbelievable job,” Barry says, “and has become a solid defender.” He also needed to learn about spacing and ball movement and being a little more cooperative on the floor. And to his credit, Lewandowski says, he responded to those shortcomings with humility. “You’re right,” he likes to say, “I can get better at this.” Not only can he; he wants to get better. “It’s only three guys out there. There’s nowhere to hide,” Jimmer says. “I like that aspect of it.”

It’s forced him to become the type of player he never could be in the NBA: someone well-rounded — and absolutely deadly as a scorer. “For every single defense, on every single team, their No. 1 objective is to stop Jimmer,” Lewandowski says. And, like at BYU, that doesn’t happen much. In addition to the 2022 AmeriCup, Jimmer led Team USA to victory at the 2023 PanAm Games; was named Team USA’s 3-on-3 Male Athlete of the Year for 2023; and almost clinched a World Cup in 2023 against Serbia. With 19 points and the ball in his hands, he shot a 2-pointer that “went as far in the basket as a ball can possibly go without going in,” Barry says. Serbia got possession and scored to win it, sending the Americans home with silver. The squads have played several times since then (with back-and-forth results, including an April matchup in Utsunomiya, Japan, where Jimmer led all scorers with 8 and sunk a game-winning 2-pointer to secure a 21-20 victory), but never with the same significance. The Olympics could finally bring the high-stakes rematch they’ve been waiting for. Barry is mum about who he’s most enthusiastic to play, but when asked about the team’s biggest rival, Whitney isn’t. “It’s 100 percent Serbia,” she says.

Paris Olympics: ‘A new aspiration’

Jimmer’s phone and computer backgrounds are Olympic rings. Professionally, he’s thought about little else in the past two years. “When this presented itself, it gave him a new goal, a new aspiration, and just the ultimate opportunity and the ultimate situation,” Whitney says. “He could die happy,” she adds of winning Olympic gold. “It would mean everything. It would be iconic. Legendary. It’s everything he’s ever wanted.”

He admits it takes him 15, maybe even 20 minutes longer to get warmed up nowadays than it did in his 20s, but once he’s ready, he’s in top condition physically. Mentally, he’s never been sharper. And most importantly: “I’m as comfortable in my own skin as I’ve ever been,” he says. “I feel like I’m playing really, really good basketball right now. As good as I’ve ever been.”

FIBA maintains individual rankings of all the world’s 3-on-3 players, and Jimmer currently ranks second behind two Serbians and a Dutchman. His coach believes the list doesn’t reflect how good he is. “When you go into a situation where you have the best player in the world playing with you,” he says of Jimmer, “it gives you that ability to go to a different level.”

In April, Jimmer finally played at the Final Four — during halftime of the UConn-Alabama game, in a 3-on-3 exhibition against Puerto Rico. “It is maybe the biggest arena that I’ve ever been in,” Lewandowski says. The crowd was listed at over 74,000. “I don’t think any of the other guys had ever played on a stage like that.” Jimmer hadn’t either, but he’d come the closest, and he was ready. The U.S. trounced Puerto Rico, 16-8, behind a barrage of vintage Jimmer shots from deep. “He embraces those moments,” Lewandowski says. “And I think that when you have your best player embrace those moments, and want to be in those situations, everyone follows.”

“He had to reevaluate his dream. And he had to come to peace with the fact that there are some things you can’t control.”

Whitney will be watching the Olympic Games in person, along with their kids. She’ll be there for 10 days, win or lose, before heading home to Denver — hopefully, alongside her gold-winning husband. And then? “We’ll see,” Jimmer says. “I wish I could say one way or the other. But I think all options are on the table.”

The options include diving into the several companies he owns, or his work with a venture capital firm. His 3-on-3 team will still have a season to play, though he isn’t sure he’ll continue. “I think it’s just kind of dependent on how the Olympics go,” Whitney says. Maybe he’ll get into coaching basketball; he’s wanted to do that for a long time. Or maybe he’ll just prioritize spending time with Whitney and their kids. Whatever he does, it sounds like the 2024 Olympics could be Jimmer’s last basketball run.

Paris could be his last chance to finally deliver on the promise he flashed at BYU — and the last chance for fans to watch him do it. To witness that familiar magic he brought to the basketball world all those years ago. And, amid that familiarity, to witness something new: a player who refuses to be defined by his past, and instead embraces the possibilities of his present — hopefully by hoisting a gold medal at last.

This story appears in the July/August 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine . Learn more about how to subscribe .