Robbie Hummel hopes second playing career gets him all the way to Tokyo

Robbie Hummel was done playing basketball for a living, after untimely injuries had repeatedly sidetracked both his college and NBA careers and an unpleasant season spent playing in Russia drained his spirit.

It was over.

The former Purdue star was ready to retire.

Somewhere along the way, he told Craig Moore of his plans to walk away in order to pursue work in TV. Hummel had come to know the former Northwestern guard from their college days playing against one another.

"I had no idea he had like ESPN and Big Ten Network calling him, so I was telling him, 'You're crazy, you have to keep playing,'" Moore remembers. "'First off, you're making tons of money and you're never going to be making this much money ever again doing something other than playing basketball.' I told him I knew how much he loved the game from being around him a bunch and that it was really sad to hear he wasn't enjoying it as much as he was at Purdue, or in the NBA, or in high school.

"I told him, 'I hate the fact that someone who's as good a player as you who's loved the game as much as you have ... is walking away."

Moore didn't talk Hummel out of giving up his professional pursuits, but he did ultimately convince him to keep playing.

This week, Hummel traveled to Belgrade, to begin a month spent mostly overseas as part of his new playing career, his side-job as it were, playing, often with Moore, as part of the Ariel Slow and Steady 3x3 team, named for Ariel Investments, whose CEO, John Rogers, formed the team many years ago following his own playing career at Princeton and subsequently filled its ranks with Princeton basketball influence, a mold Moore saw Hummel fitting when he recruited him to join the six-man program.

"It's been mostly guys who've come from the Princeton offense, but Robbie was back-doored enough playing Northwestern for five years that he kind of knows the offense well enough," joked Moore, a financial adviser in New York City, "and he's a very quick learner in basketball, knows it like the back of his hand.

"In 3x3 you have to be to be able to pass, dribble and shoot and Robbie fits that mold perfectly and he's 6-7, 6-8, and that helps a ton. He knows how to move without the ball, sees the game well and can shoot it, pass it and dribble it."

The 3x3 game is obviously very different, beyond just involving 40 percent fewer players. It's a halfcourt game, sped up by a 12-second shot clock, spaced out enough to put a premium on versatility and one's ability to make three-point shots, or as they count in 3x3, two-point shots. You play to 21, traditional threes counting for two, and traditional twos counting for one.

After a storied, however complicated, Purdue career, followed by several seasons playing professionally, either for the Minnesota Timberwolves or overseas, Hummel, 30, has starred in this new environment, as you might expect a player a few years removed from playing in the NBA might, even though the game is very different.

At the Red Bull USA Basketball 3X Nationals in Las Vegas earlier this spring, Ariel split into two teams — one four-man team and a two-man group that picked up two other players — and both made the championship game, with Hummel's team winning it. He was named the event's MVP.

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In late June, Hummel, along with Ariel teammate Kareem Maddox and pick-ups Canyon Barry and Briante Weber, will represent the U.S. at the World Cup event in Amsterdam. Barry, Rick's son, played college basketball at College of Charleston, then Florida; Weber played at VCU. Both are currently playing in the G-League.

Based on FIBA's rankings system for individuals, Hummel is ranked 40th in the world, fourth among Americans (behind three of his Ariel teammates). FIBA's rankings are based on team results, the magnitude of events participated in and a player's statistics.

Already, 3x3 has taken Hummel all over the world, from South Korea, to China, to India, to numerous stops in Europe and an event in Puerto Rico. In the next few weeks alone, it's Serbia, then a layover in Barcelona (to see former AAU teammate Luke Harangody) on his way to China, then New York City for USA Basketball training camp, then the World Cup in the Netherlands.

"I was skeptical of all this at first," Hummel said. "I thought, 'You're telling me we're going to fly around the world to play in two-day tournaments that take 14-hour flights to get to and the most you're going to play is five 10-minute games if you win the whole thing?"

Hummel says his young 3x3 career has fit ideally with his broadcasting career, because the 3x3 season starts when the college season ends and finishes right when the college season starts. It's afforded him a chance to see the world, all expenses paid.

And last year, he and his Ariel teammates divided among themselves nearly $100,000 in tournament purses.

"The Olympics are the main draw of doing this, though," Hummel said. "The money's great and all, and the travel, but I think playing in the Olympics would be a cool ending to a strange basketball career."

In Tokyo in 2020, 3x3 will debut as an Olympic sport, evidence of what Hummel believes to be the sport trending toward the mainstream, and it's reasonable to think it might be members of Ariel Slow and Steady representing the United States.

According to USA Basketball officials, specific selection criteria for the 2020 team are still being finalized, but what is already known is that at least two members of the four-man team must be top-10 in USA Basketball's points-based rankings, and currently every member of Ariel fits that requirement right now. The 2020 Red Bull Nationals — Ariel produced both the 2018 champion and runner-up this year — could matter as well.

The reality is that selection is a long way off, and could not occur until just before the Games, per USA Basketball.

But, if the 3x3 landscape in America looks then anything like it does at this very moment, it would seem reasonable to think that Hummel could be part of the four-man group sent to Japan.

And if even if not, maybe Hummel's experience will still have fulfilled Moore's hope for him.

"I told him then that hopefully it would bring some joy back to the game for him," Moore said, "and let him go out on a better note than not enjoying the game anymore."

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