The biggest 3×3 tournament in the history of Romanian basketball, 3×3 EuroTour Wizz Air Sport Arena Streetball, gathered last weekend more than 10.000 people, players and spectators, in front of the largest civilian building in the world, The Palace of Parliament from Bucharest.
A lot of public personalities support 3×3 basketball during campaign “From the streets to the Olympics”. “From the streets, to the Olympics”, a message for all the 3×3 basketball fans who are dreaming to reach the highest stage in sports. A great movie regarding this campaign can be found HERE!
And, not even figuratively speaking, the sky was the limit for a star studded event.
The official ball of the competition came from more than 4.000 meters altitude, carried by a parachute jumper. He landed just in front of European basketball legend, Jorge Garbajosa, who received the ball as a prize.
He was not the only star who enjoyed the high quality 3×3 basketball games and the spectacular side-shows. Former Olympic champion Sarunas Marciulionis showed he kept his shooting skills intact in a short demonstration on Friday.
Former Los Angeles Lakers and Serbian star, Vlade Divac, took one step further, and entered the court on Sunday, for the Celebrity Game, in the same team the Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta, a huge basketball fan and still a player in a local league.
And if the parachute jumpers used the laws of gravity to bring down to earth the official ball, the high-flyers defied those laws to steal the show for two nights in a row.
Justin Darlington proved to be too good and with a dunk over 2,07 meters Jorge Garbajosa, won the dunk contest in the most enthusiastic way.
Even upper above the rim went the athletes from Lords of Gravity, the Hungarian acrobat-dunk team, who combined amazingly skills from basketball, gymnastics and fitness for a breathtaking show.
And when it became about basketball, what a battle it was. Passion and determination were the same, even if it was about a kids’ game or a veterans’ game, a wheelchair game or a Special Olympics game.
311 teams (more than 1.200 players) matched up for more than 400 games during the 3-day competition. All of this figures represented records for a 3×3 basketball tournament in Romania and in the end everybody was happy to say: I played here!
And as a perfect example to the globalization of 3×3 basketball, the team who won that Elite Men category, Salajean Hustlers, had two Romanians, one American and one Serbian. They will represent Bucharest in EuroTour final in Budapest.
IOC Olympic Programme Commission member and former Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) Vice President Walter Sieber closely watched every detail of the tournament, as Sport Arena Streetball was the showcase for FIBA’s official bid to include 3×3 basketball at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
President Yvan Mainini and secretary general Patrick Baumann, together with FIBA Oceania president and former FIBA president Bob Elphinston as well as the Turkish Basketball Federation president Turgay Demirel and also Alex Sanchez, head of 3×3 FIBA, Kosta Iliev, 3×3 FIBA director, Robert Rieblinger, head of 3×3 FIBA Europe, were among the officials present in Bucharest.
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