LeBron James (USA, in white) attempts a shot against China's Yao Ming at the 2008 Olympics.
Basketball is a sport contested at the Summer Olympic Games. A men's basketball tournament was first held at the 1904 Olympics as a demonstration; it has been held at every Summer Olympics since 1936. In the 1972 Olympics, the final game between the United States and the Soviet Union was a controversial one, as the game's final three seconds were replayed three times by a FIBA (International Basketball Federation) official without the authority to do so, before the Soviet Union won their first gold medal, which would have been won by the United States if the game was not re-started against the rules. The U.S. filed a formal protest but was rejected by FIBA. As a result, the United States refused to accept the silver medal, and no player has ever claimed his medal.[1] After a protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.[2] The Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in response.[3][4] Both boycotts affected basketball at the Olympics, as both had successful basketball teams at the time. Until 1992, the Olympics were restricted to "amateur" players. The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but all of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis.[5] In April 1989, through the leadership of Secretary General Borislav Stanković, FIBA approved the rule that allowed NBA players to compete in international tournaments, including the Olympics. In the next Olympics, the 1992 Summer Games, the "Dream Team" won the gold medal at the 1992 basketball tournament, with an average winning margin of 44 points per game, and without calling a single time out. By this time, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia no longer existed, but their successor states continued to be among the leading forces. Two newly independent countries of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union, Croatia and Lithuania, won the silver and bronze medals respectively.
American womanDiana Taurasi is the all-time leader for the most Olympic medals in basketball, with six gold, with three other women having won five medals—Americans Sue Bird (five gold) and Teresa Edwards (four gold and one bronze) plus Australia'sLauren Jackson (three silver and two bronze). Nine players have won four medals: Americans Lisa Leslie, Tamika Catchings, Sylvia Fowles (each with four golds with the women's team), Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James (each with three golds and one bronze with the men's team), and Kevin Durant (four gold medals); SovietGennadi Volnov (one gold, two silver, one bronze) and Sergei Belov (one gold, three bronze), and Australian Kristi Harrower (three silver, one bronze). Taurasi is the all-time leader for the most consecutive gold medal wins in basketball. Five other individuals, all American, have won three golds – Katie Smith, Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes, Seimone Augustus, and Breanna Stewart – and 23 other players, not including the previously mentioned, have won three medals. Two other American women, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young, are the only players to have won medals of any color in both the full-court and 3x3 variants of the sport. Both won golds in the debut of 3x3 in 2020 and in the full-court game in 2024.[6][7]
The United States is by far the most successful country in full-court Olympic basketball, with United States men's teams having won 17 of 20 tournaments in which they participated, including seven consecutive titles from 1936 through 1968. United States women's teams have won 10 titles out of the 12 tournaments in which they competed, including eight in a row from 1996 to 2024. Besides the United States, Argentina is the only nation still in existence that has won either the men's or women's tournament. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and the Unified Team are the countries no longer in existence that have won the tournament. The United States is the defending champion of both the men's and women's tournaments. As of the 2016 Summer Olympics, 90 medals (30 of each color) have been awarded to teams from 20 National Olympic Committees.
Two gold medal-winning teams were inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010. The 1960 U.S. Olympic team featured four players who would eventually enter the Hall of Fame as players, one of whom later entered the Hall as a contributor; a head coach who would enter the Hall as a contributor; and a team manager who entered the Hall as a coach. The 1992 U.S. Olympic team, better known as the "Dream Team", had 11 future Hall of Fame players, along with three coaches who were inducted to the Hall as coaches (one of whom was previously inducted separately for his accomplishments as a player).[8][9]
On June 9, 2017, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee announced that 3x3 basketball would become an official Olympic sport as of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, for both men and women.[10][11]
Men
Individuals who have been inducted to the Naismith Hall of Fame (including announced members awaiting induction) are indicated as follows:
"Hall of Famers Index". Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on March 25, 2013. Retrieved April 4, 2012. (Hall of Famers inducted through 2011)
^Two Lithuanian men who have won three medals, Šarūnas Marčiulionis and Arvydas Sabonis, are not listed in the IOC's printed record book as having won three medals. Both won gold medals with the USSR in 1988 and bronze medals with Lithuania in 1992 and 1996. Sabonis is listed in the IOC's official online database of medalists with all three medals. Marčiulionis, whose full birth name is Raimondas Šarūnas Marčiulionis, is listed under two separate names in the IOC online database. His gold medal in 1988 is listed under "Raimundas", a variant of his first name, and both bronze medals are listed under the name "Sarunas", an anglicized form of his middle name.
