Basketball At LA 2028

[Durban Sandshark]

Perhaps the biggest Summer Olympic team sport already not scheduled before the Opening Ceremony seems to become one of them with soccer, field hockey, rugby sevens, water polo, team handball, cricket, and soccer all starting two days before the OC on July 12. The canoe slalom competition in Oklahoma City is expected to start in the morning of July 14, hours before the opening ceremony later that day, about 1931 kilometres away. Surprised that field hockey is also now part of this. Unclear now whether the men or women will kick things off there but three games each will be played July 12-13 with no game starting earlier than 12pm PDT. The bronze medal games will be played on July 28 and 29, and gold-medal games will occur on July 29 and 30 that will close the Games on exactly July 30. Also intended to make the experience easier for the basketball players, teams, broadcasters, and fans:

https://www.sportsnet.ca/olympics/article/basketball-at-2028-la-olympics-starts-two-days-before-opening-ceremony-fiba-says/

[Durban Sandshark]

Now that I've given this some further thought following this development, I'm now starting to be even further convinced that the Summer Olympics schedule should be expanded to a month like with soccer's and rugby's World Cups (rugby's version now goes within two months) in following David Wallenshinsky's proposal. Soccer used to have the pre-Opening Ceremony competition all to itself until Tokyo 2020 with softball joining in. Paris 2024 had rugby sevens (largely due to, I think, sharing Stade De France with track and field), archery, and women's team handball all playing at that stage.  Los Angeles 2028, it's going to be basketball, cricket, water polo, team handball, rugby sevens, and field hockey along with soccer. Why is water polo going first this time out of the aquatics in Los Angeles? Just wondering. With cricket, surely the all-lucrative and powerful South Asian subcontinent will unquestionably get engaged with the Summer Olympics like never before in higher broadcasting fees, greater rights, viewership, and coverage there. Basketball will be definitely OK here in this Los Angeles edition with this scheduling change given its massive global popularity and FIBA's global sports power and consent. Guess it's too late to change it to a month now for Los Angeles but maybe not Brisbane. Maybe.

With all these sports we've been getting and watching in recent Summer Olympics programs, especially ones that tend to come and go like karate and breakdancing (never mind that Los Angeles is a highly important global hip hop city), and respond to gigantism, why not expand the schedule to a month? It makes things less tough to seriously follow them outside the Olympics more consistently for mainstream fans. Not to mention leaving the impression of multiple sports going over each other now in Los Angeles' 2028 schedule. Why not also expand the athlete ranks to around 14-15,000? We can move the comp official days pre-Opening Ceremony and make them official too and have two off days following that with the OC and a day off from competition. Another off day be applied elsewhere. Broadcasters/streamers in multiple platforms like NBC in particular surely would like to have and welcome their schedules stretched out more while still going wall-to-wall in hours, and viewers won't have to choose what to see at the expense of another worthy sport live while still heading on-demand and with both parties getting breathers. 

[Durban Sandshark]

Pencil in these Olympic men's and women's basketball dates now made official by the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Organizing Committee! After that enthralling, exciting, and memorable Olympic basketball we enjoyed in Paris last summer--instant classic tournaments in both ranking high alltime with incredible star-studded performances and great finishes, Los Angeles 2028 hopes more of the same at the Inglewood Intuit Dome, the home of the Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles' real, only, true NBA team. Not far from where the Forum exists, the site of the 1984 Olympic basketball. Actually this takes place earlier than the 1984 version (July 29-August 10, 1984) Team USA hopes to repeat and continue on their gold medal runs with some new stars included, and, in the case of the women, extend and eclipse the Olympic basketball winning streak set by the American men from 1936-1972 at 63 wins (the women are currently 5 wins away at 58 that started with the bronze medal game versus Cuba in Barcelona 1992, and that would've been ended had France stole gold from them in Paris. Had the Americans not lost to the former Soviet Union/Unified Team minus the Baltic nations at the 1992 semifinals, this would've been taken cared already and been extended. Did force a revamping in USA Basketball's women's program as its legacy and now seeing the immense fruits of that) in the face of rapidly-improving global opposition around the world. Get excited in 3 years' time!  

Here are the main dates for both tournaments taking place at the famous Inglewood Intuit Dome. The women kick things off July 12 in group play. The men end things with the gold medal final:

July 12–20: Group Phase of the Women’s Tournament

July 13–21: Group Phase of the Men’s Tournament

July 22–23: Quarter-Finals of the Women’s Tournament

July 24–25: Quarter-Finals of the Men’s Tournament

July 26: Semi-Finals of the Women’s Tournament

July 27: Semi-Finals of the Men’s Tournament

July 28: Bronze Medal Game of the Women’s Tournament

July 29: Final of the Women’s Tournament and Bronze Medal Game of the Men’s Tournament

July 30: Final of the Men’s Tournament

The Men's gold medal game will serve as the last team sport Final of the Olympic Games, with the Women's championship taking place the previous day during USA primetime. A reverse of what took in Paris 2024. Again, no classification games: 

https://www.fiba.basketball/en/news/la-2028-announce-schedules-for-olympic-basketball-tournaments

[baron-pierreIV]

21 hours ago, Durban Sandshark said:

The Men's gold medal game will serve as the last team sport Final of the Olympic Games,

Uhmmm, not so.  Indoor Volleyball will have Women's Gold on Sunday, July 30.  The Volleyball match will start at 10:00am, earlier than the Men's Basketball finals for TV reasons. 

In Swimming, they will have both genders' 4 x 100m Medley Relay finals starting @ 3:00pm.  So, those will be the LAST Team events just before the CC gets underway. 

It looks like they have done a great job of balancing both genders' presence on the last day.  

LA28OlympicGamesCompetitionScheduleByEventV2Final.pdf 

Edited November 19, 2025 by baron-pierreIV