Latvia, the Netherlands and France are the top 3 European teams, officially. Congratulations, in 3x3 winning the EuroCup is harder than winning WorldCup! The following teams didn’t make it to the podium: Serbia, Germany, Lithuania - it says a lot about the level of half-court basketball being played in Belgium last weekend.
The pool phase served as a sieve, separating the top 8 teams in the world from the rest. Switzerland, Italy, Ireland and Estonia unsurprisingly didn’t win any game and went home. And starting from there, the horror series began.
Deadly quarter-finals
Epic fight between Lithuanians and Serbians, finished in overtime, resulted, in our opinion, in a lack of medal for both teams.
Lithuania’s loss simply finished the tournament for them, but it also seemed to consume too much energy from Serbians, who lost their next two games (semifinal and bronze medal one), scoring only 14 points (!) in each of them.
The mighty and still very young Germans this time weren’t ready for the Dutch’s suffocating defence and all of Worthy De Jong’s tricks. Nesta Agasi is a great response to Denzel Agyeman’s athleticism. The closest 3x3 version of Vince Carter was definitely an X factor in this tournament, shooting 14/17 from inside (including 8 dunks!) and 3/7 outside the arc. 26- years-old, 200 cm tall Agasi from the Utrecht team is another product of 3x3 Unites - the best 3x3 development program in the world.
It clearly tasted sweet, after the final loss in Amsterdam two months ago…
The Spaniards, who beat Netherlands earlier in the pool phase, were bookmaker favorites before the game against France. But Lorenzo Thirouard-Samson calmly closed the game from the line…
…and later on, in bronze medal game, playing without Suhard who got injured in the semi-final, Lorenzo scored 17 points (yes, seventeen!) against Serbia. 25-years-old, 197 cm tall Thirouard-Samson had a historic game - he made 6/8 on one-pointers and 5/10 on two-pointers. You may recall him from team Marseille some time ago; this season he plays in Élancourt (twice on the World Tour so far).
Last but not least, Nauris Miezis and Kristaps Gluditis killed Belgian dreams about success in front of the home crowd. Belgians went 10/10 from inside the arc, but Latvian two-point shooting (6/12) was too much. No Lasmanis, no problem!
Gluditis, who plays for the Japanese team Shibuya this season (used to play for Kandava before), is a 30-years-old, 191 cm tall shooting machine:
2026 belongs to Latvians
After an impressive win at the Warsaw WorldCup a quarter ago, they replaced half of the team… and won again! The chemistry, ball movement, positional interchangeability, and defence shown by the Latvian team are unmatched this season. Gluditis played great, but it doesn’t mean that the rest of the team played worse basketball! Nauris Miezis was simply himself, making most clutch shots and orchestrating everything (17 assists). Zigmars Raimo was everywhere, grabbing 18 offensive rebounds. Rihards Kuksis shot 39% from deep and had only 2 turnovers in 5 games.
Latvia is number one in Europe, again, after 9 years:
The voices duo does great
If you watched EuroCup on YouTube, as we did, you might be positively surprised by the commentary provided by the one and only Kyle Montgomery (as usual), this time accompanied by Angelo Tsagarakis. The first one provides emotions, the second one - technical details, understanding of the game and lots of insights. You can really hear the love of the game, coming from the heart of a streetball veteran, who was a heck of a player a decade ago:
FIBA3x3 family does a great job at staying connected and involved, also when the active careers are done. Hopefully we will hear more former players’ voices in the future, also from the women’s side.
By the way: Worthy De Jong is living the best life on the planet, by far:
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