Basketball Comes Home: What LA28 Can Mean for the Next Generation

When the Olympic basketball tournament tips off at Intuit Dome in 2028, the audience will include millions of young players. The question is what they will find when they put the ball down.

By Brian Taylor, Senior Basketball and Athlete Development Correspondent

Family First News Desk  |  Where Sports and Education Go Hand in Hand

Intuit Dome in Inglewood is scheduled to host five-on-five Olympic basketball during LA28.

Exterior or interior view of Intuit Dome in Inglewood, the planned LA28 basketball venue.

In 2028, the Olympic basketball tournament will be played at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, the home of the Los Angeles Clippers. For a game invented in America and shaped in Southern California gyms and playgrounds, it is a homecoming.

The Olympic stage has changed basketball and been changed by it. NBA players first joined the Olympic program in 1992, and the United States men’s team won its fifth consecutive gold medal at the 2024 Games in Paris.

But a tournament is not a legacy. The legacy is what happens to the youngest players in the neighborhoods around the arena.

Los Angeles has a model for that. After the 1984 Games, a share of the Olympic surplus created the LA84 Foundation, which has invested more than $225 million in Southern California, including grants to more than 1,100 youth sports organizations and a long record of coaching education. The Games became a permanent investment in how children play.

What would a basketball legacy look like in 2028?

Courts that are open. Safe, well-lit courts and gyms, available after school and in the summer, in the neighborhoods that have the fewest.

Coaches who are trained. A good coach changes a child more than a good arena does. Coaching education is the least visible part of a legacy and one of the most valuable.

Pathways that reach the classroom. Basketball programs that connect to tutoring, mentoring and college readiness reach the whole child.

The Olympic tournament will last two weeks. The young people watching it will carry it for years.

If Los Angeles gets the details right, the Games will not simply come home. They will leave something behind.

Disclosure: Family First Foundation publishes Family First News Desk and runs youth sports and education programs in Los Angeles. Brian Taylor is the Foundation’s Director of Sports and Education.