A typical week for Dan Mavraides at Beverly Hills-based RIA Advanced Research Investment Solutions (Aris) is probably pretty similar to yours.

He talks to clients. He researches funds and managers. He puts together Excel spreadsheets. He puts up hundreds of jump shots and lifts weights at the crack of dawn.

Wait, what? Rewind.

By day, Mavraides is an analyst at the $12 billion firm, training toward becoming an advisor. But on the weekends, the 30-year-old is steadily working toward the Olympics, hoping to earn a spot representing the US in the inaugural 3x3 basketball tournament at the 2020 summer games in Tokyo.

Mavraides was a decorated basketball player at Princeton, earning second-team All-Ivy League honors in 2011 and helping the Tigers to the NCAA Tournament. After graduating, he briefly played professionally in Greece and Italy before returning to the US in 2014 with a fairly unusual résumé for an aspiring advisor. He interned as a real estate broker with CBRE and managed a restaurant before joining Aris. 

'Once I stopped playing basketball professionally, I really didn’t play much at all. I still enjoyed the game, but having gone from that being my mode of income to then shifting out, I put all my time into my new career instead,’ he explained.

In the summer of 2015, several months after diving into the RIA business full-time, Mavraides participated in – and won – his first major 3x3 competition, the Nike Basketball 3ON3 tournament in Los Angeles. He had signed up for a team called Ariel Slow & Steady, organized by Ariel Investments chief executive and fellow Princeton basketball alum John Rogers. His reward? A $500 American Express gift card and $250 to spend on Nike products.

Photo credit: FIBA.com

Taking off

Getting into 3x3 basketball is no easy transition. The game is played with one basket on a half-court, with a 12-second shot clock. The game is limited to 10 minutes, and whichever team reaches 21 points first or has scored more points when time expires is the winner. Teams are limited to just one substitute.

‘It’s an incredibly physical game,’ said Robbie Hummel, who played two seasons in the NBA for the Minnesota Timberwolves and is one of Mavraides' 3x3 teammates. ‘I’ve gotten more technical fouls in a weekend than I probably did in high school, college or professionally, which is unbelievable for me. They just don’t call fouls.’

Mavraides’ sporting fortunes have been promising since he made the leap into 3x3. His team has won the past three USA Basketball 3x3 national championships and competed in the 2017 FIBA World Cup. On the weekends, Mavraides’ six-man club team, Team Princeton, competes in the FIBA 3x3 World Tour, jetting off every weekend four at a time to compete in destinations as far-flung as Mexico City or Chengdu, China.

Few would envy Mavraides’ sleep schedule, and his training regime is not exactly glamorous, either. Team Princeton is spread out all over the US and has no coach, so Mavraides trains at a gym near Aris’ office before work or on his lunch break. He usually only gets to play with his teammates at formal competitions.

‘Monday through Thursday, I’ll be in the office, working in Excel, running around to meetings. Thursday night at 5:00pm, I’ll dash over to LAX, which is truly one of the most hellish places on earth. I get into the international terminal and fly to Berlin or Moscow or Malaysia or Rio. I land a day and a half later with the time change,’ Mavraides said. ‘You’ve just slept on two planes, 18 hours of flying, and then you have to find a way to get to bed on Friday night because you play Saturday and Sunday… I usually make it back into the office at some point on Monday and walk in like a zombie.’

Fortunately for Mavraides, he has an understanding boss.

‘He probably works more hours than anyone here,’ said Aris partner Alex Shahidi. ‘He is in the office every day that he’s not playing basketball, essentially. He’ll have weeks where he works Monday through Thursday and then take the red eye to China and play for three days, coming back Monday morning. It’s remarkable that he is able to pull that off. I think part of it is because he is tremendously passionate and he has an unbelievable energy… He’s like the Energizer bunny that just doesn’t stop.’

The road to Tokyo

The stakes will be getting exponentially higher for Mavraides over the next couple of months.

Earlier in May, Mavraides came up big when USA Basketball decided to expose 3x3 basketball to a nationwide audience and take its national championship from a private indoor facility in Colorado Springs, Colo to an outdoor setup in downtown Las Vegas. The free-to-the-public event drew title sponsorship from Red Bull, a first for the sport.

Facing a talent pool of club teams, ex-Division 1 basketball players and a handful of NBA G-Leaguers, Mavraides, Hummel, former Princeton teammate Kareem Maddox and Damon Huffman marched to the title. They defeated fellow Rogers-organized squad Ariel NYAC, 21-12, in the championship game after dropping just a single contest in pool play.

The victory gives Mavraides and his club teammates the inside track to be selected as the US’ representative at the 2019 FIBA 3X3 World Cup.

If the US national team reaches the top four in the FIBA 3x3 rankings by November 1, it will automatically qualify for the Olympics. If the US doesn’t make it through that way, it will have another chance to qualify by putting in a strong performance at the 2020 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

The US men's team currently sits seventh in the world rankings, having accrued around 15.7 million points through FIBA-endorsed events. Serbia, Russia, Slovenia, Latvia, Japan and China form the top six.

The national team selection process in 2020 is slightly murkier, as USA Basketball will select the four men’s and four women’s representatives on the national teams. Red Bull is sponsoring a series of open qualifying tournaments in 23 cities around the US this summer, which will filter down into regional championships in the fall and the 2020 national championship next March.

Mavraides expects USA Basketball to choose at least two players who rank in the top 10 for points accrued at FIBA-endorsed events. Mavraides currently sits second in the US and 27th in the world, having accrued 744,080 points.

It still hasn’t quite sunk in yet for Mavraides, who has been filming commercials to help USA Basketball prepare its marketing push.

‘It’s not that I’m not ready for it, but I think there’s going to be a lot of events from here through the next 12 months or so to decide who makes the Olympics and who misses out. That will be pretty surreal,’ he said.

‘I’m constantly explaining this sport to people. The only time I’ve had to explain things to people more was when I did a postgraduate year at Phillips Exeter Academy and people were asking, “What in the world is a fifth year? Are you in college? Are you in high school?”

‘No one knows this game. It’s very close to us, it’s something we have sacrificed so much of our daily lives for, and yet no one in the US has any idea what it is.’

They will soon enough.