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The London Summer Games Basketball will take place from July 27th through August 12th.
London Olympic Basketball Schedule
At London Summer Games, the Basketball competition will take place in two venues. All preliminary games, along with the women’s quarter-finals, will take place at the Basketball Arena, a new, purpose-built venue in the Olympic Park. The men’s quarter-finals, plus all semi-finals and medal games, will be held at the state-of-the-art North Greenwich Arena just across the Thames
At the London Summer Games, one of the world’s most popular and fastest-growing team sports will be showcased at the Basketball Arena and North Greenwich Arena.
Venues: Basketball Arena – Olympic Park (preliminaries, women’s quarter-finals); North Greenwich Arena (men’s quarter-finals and women’s semi-finals onwards)
Dates: Saturday 28 July – Sunday 12 August
Medal events: 2
Athletes: 288 (144 men, 144 women, 12 teams in each event).
More about Olympic Basketball
The 2012 basketball tournament will follow the established format of 12 teams, divided into two pools of six. Those teams, apart from the holders and hosts, traditionally qualify on a continental basis.
The rules are simple enough: you have a hoop 10 feet above the ground, you get two points for throwing the ball through it, three points if you are outside the three-point line, and one-point for a free-throw, which is awarded for a transgression.
In Olympic basketball, games consist of four quarters of 10 minutes (as opposed to the NBA, which has 12-minute quarters). The clock is stopped when there is a delay, stoppage, substitution or time-out, so although there is 40 minutes of actual playing time, games usually last a lot longer.
There are no draws in basketball. If the scores are level after the fourth quarter, a five-minute overtime period is played, followed by further five-minute periods as necessary.
Each team can bring a squad of 12 players to the Olympics and professionals, including those in the NBA, can be selected.
Each team can field five players who can be rotated via rolling subs. The traditionally accepted positions are point guard (the playmaker), shooting guard (the point scorer), power forward (in defence they block shots and in attack use their size to set up point scoring opportunities), small forward (a versatile role which involves elements of the power forward and shooting guard) and centre (normally the team’s tallest player who uses their size to dominate ‘under the boards’ in both attack and defence).
Men’s basketball, women’s basketball