Sport Arena Streetball Tour 2018 kicked off in style with Nike 3×3 Challenge by Raiffeisen Bank

Top players, music and sports celebrities and thousands of fans had one destination during the last weekend: ParkLake Shopping Center. For three days, the shopping mall was the host of Nike 3×3 Challenge by Raiffeisen Bank, the season opener for the Sport Arena Streetball Tour 2018.

Famous Romanian singer Lora had plenty of fun on the basketball court in the celebrity game, teaming up with football legend Bogdan Stelea and Andrei Pavel, one of Simona Halep’s coaches. Their opponents were famous basketball players Anca Stoenescu, a player with 14 national titles in her illustrious career or Virgil Stanescu, former Euroleague and Eurocup player.

TV star Wilmark together with the Dracula’s Girls cheerleaders offered the artistic moment of the tournament, dancing salsa during a break.

The elite categories for both men and women were dominated by teams from Bucharest. Rapid, with  FIBA 3×3 European champion Catalin Vlaicu won the competition in the Open Men category, receiving a 1000 euros money prize, while Sonia Ursu, FIBA 3×3 European silver medalist in 2016, led her team, Stiinta Bucharest to the Open Women title and got Fitbit smart watches.

Andrew Wiggins, a former Guiness Book holder for basketball freestyle, together with Tarryn Algar and the dunker Joel Henry put up some amazing freestyle and dunk shows that electrified the crowd. Algar and Wiggins connected for a unique alley-oop, with the lob pass coming from the rooftop terrace of the mall, creating one of the highlights of the tournament.

For the first time in the history of Sport Arena Streetball competitions, the youngest basketball players had their own categories. Under 10 and Under 12 participants took the competition by storm together with their fanatic supporters, namely parents, grandparents, older brothers and sisters, dogs, dolls and other living or non-living companions.

All the games from the main court were livestreamed, while the players had the chance to immediately follow their own games, creating themselves their own highlights or scouting the games of their opponents. All these were possible with Playsight, a video monitoring system that transforms any court into a smart court and it’s already used by teams in NCAA and NBA.

Sport Arena Streetball launched during the week-end the 3×3 apparel collection together with Nike and Sport Loft apparel shops. For the moment the collection includes only the official reversible jersey of the Nike 3×3 Challenge, basketball shorts and the FIBA 3×3 t-shirt but it will be developed during the season.

The Sport Arena Streetball event was organized together with Nike and ParkLake Shopping Center and was supported by: Raiffeisen Bank, Fitbit, Gatorade, Ursus Cooler, Sport Loft, Pep&Pepper, Horizon, Ideal Board Games, World Class, Carrefour ParkLake, ProFM and the Bucharest Sport and Youth Directorate.

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