Those are players who have carried Romanian basketball on their shoulders for the last two decades, at the highest level, whether they were playing for the national team or at club level. Virgil St\u0103nescu is the most iconic Romanian basketball player since 1989, having put together good seasons in the most powerful European championships and served as captain for the national team for almost two decades. Paul Helcioiu, winner of the FIBA Eurochallenge Cup back in 2005 with Asesoft Ploie\u0219ti, was also a key-player for Romania\u2019s national team. Mihai Paul won several times the elite 5×5 basketball national title and was the captain of Steaua CSM EximBank in the team\u2019s resurgent years. Those three stars are joined by a young 23-year-old player from Timi\u0219oara, Alin Zaharie, who drew everyone\u2019s attention in Timi\u015foara Streetball, a stop in the 3×3 Sport Arena Streetball national tour. He is curently playing the 5×5 basketball \u00a0National League in Romania, for BCM Pite\u015fti.<\/p>\n
Star player: Virgil St\u0103nescu<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no easy way to make a few-words presentation for one of Romania\u2019s most representative basketball players. Sticking to 3×3 only, St\u0103nescu has been a close friend of Sport Arena Streetball ever since the beginning. And when his professional career approached the end, he saw in 3×3 basketball a new way to nourish and demonstrate his competitive spirit. In 2015, he reached the semifinals at Raiffeisen Bank Bucharest Challenger with the Make-A-Wish team and now certainly targets a better finish for this year’s edition.<\/p>\n
Even though they have never played in this formula at Raiffeisen Bank Bucharest Challenger and Mihai Paul is actually making a debut in FIBA Endorsed 3×3 competitions, those players’ high-class pedigree, their basketball background and huge experience will prove helpful in some very strong matchups. Bucharest Legends will have one fiery match after another, in a group that also features world champion Novi Sad Al Wahda \u2013 led by world number one Du\u0161an Bulut, France\u2019s Ballistik and Russia\u2019s Piter BM-18.<\/p>\n
And if American fans filled some of the world\u2019s biggest arenas during the summer to watch NBA legends in the 3×3 \u201cBig 3\u201d league, newly-launched by rap icon Ice Cube and Allen Iverson, it certainly is worth coming to University Square to watch the three legendary Romanian players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those are players who have carried Romanian basketball on their shoulders for the last two decades, at the highest level, whether they were playing for the national team or at club level. Virgil St\u0103nescu is the most iconic Romanian basketball player since 1989, having put together good seasons in the most powerful European championships and served as captain for the national team for almost two decades. Paul Helcioiu, winner of the FIBA Eurochallenge Cup back in 2005 with Asesoft Ploie\u0219ti, was also a key-player for Romania\u2019s national team. Mihai Paul…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[210,12],"tags":[115,108,192,172,88,125],"class_list":["post-1162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slider","category-stiri","tag-3x3-basketball","tag-bucharest-challenger","tag-fiba-3x3","tag-raiffeisen-bank","tag-virgil-stanescu","tag-world-tour"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3la3.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}