Ranking the funniest Olympic sports (part two)

We complete our scientific survey of how to laugh at the Paris Games.

We’re back with the top three funniest sports at the Paris Olympics. If you missed part one of the rankings, click here. As a reminder, each event was rated by its athletic impressiveness, television watchability, and overall weirdness, then the ratings were averaged for a final score.

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The Funniest Sports in the Paris Olympics

3. 3x3, Basketball

Impressiveness: 7
Watchability: 7
Weirdness: 7
Overall: 7

Ah, basketball: a sport that is famously played in many different configurations with many different numbers of players. Nothing uncanny about this setup!

A normal basketball court, definitely not something from summer camp.

3x3 basketball seems like a naked ratings grab by Olympic authorities desperate for more young-skewing sports (see also: Surfing, Skateboarding, and our next entry). But the thing is: elite basketball players don’t hoop with three players! They play in the NBA with five players. Or the NCAA with five players. Or the Euroleague with five players. Or even China with five players. Prior to this, the most notable 3-person basketball tournament in the world was run by the rapper Ice Cube and often starred retired NBA players.

As such, the USA men’s five-man basketball team is headlined by superstars like LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant. But the 3x3 team is led by Jimmer Fredette, who washed out of the NBA about a decade ago. He is 35, teaches Mormon genealogy courses part-time, and is Team USA’s best player.

If basketball weren’t such a great and often hilarious sport to watch, I would banish 3x3 from the rankings on principal.

2. Breaking

Impressiveness: 10
Watchability: 6
Weirdness: 8
Overall: 8

Young people rejoice! Breakdancing joins the Olympics — a mere 40 years after its heyday!

I kid, I kid. I’m actually excited to check out the Breaking competition, even if the official event titles “B-Boys” and “B-Girls” are giving Steve-Buscemi-dot-gif vibes.

It’s me, the young and hip Olympics!

I’m somewhat skeptical Breaking will be as fun to watch as it seems like it should be. A new event means first-time TV producers, so I’m guessing the presentation won’t be as polished as we’re used to with certain other sports.

I’ve also seen enough badly formatted Slam Dunk Contests and Home Run Derbii to know that the rules of such competitions heavily influence how fun the end product is — meaning that something like a confusing scoring system can completely ruin the whole experience. Of course, that could also mean high comedy. We’ll see!

1. Gymnastics

Impressiveness: 10
Watchability: 10
Weirdness: 10
Overall: 10

Gymnastics is perhaps the definitive Olympic sport, and it also takes the top spot in our rankings here. It’s just hard for any other sport to compete with the many different comedic strains flowing inherent to Gymnastics.

For one thing: tiny people. Simone Biles is the best gymnast ever (for now), and also the smallest (for now). Russian doctors are probably inventing a steroid that makes people smaller this very second.

Basically every other athletically impressive sport skews towards huge people, but these guys look like a team of Small Soldiers:

Those tiny fists could really do a number on your kidneys.

There’s also great variety in the various gymnastics events, as well as an entertainingly arbitrary nature to many of them. (Some bars are even. Some bars are uneven. Why? A cosmic mystery!) And the fact the there’s no professional gymnastics league, no year-round TV contract leaves it as one of the very few highly entertaining things in the world not to feel oversaturated.

Not to sound like an NBC pitchman, but if you’re watching any Olympic sport over the next couple weeks hoping to laugh (or cry! or cheer!), it’s gotta be Gymnastics.

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Question for the Comments

Which country will have the best/worst outfits during the opening ceremonies tonight?

I would quit the Olympics before I wore this outfit.