As many as 400 players from the provinces contested a basketball championship called the Red Bull Half Court tournament played for the first time at the Sri Lanka Basketball Federation court last week where eight players qualified for a passage to Egypt to contest an international event.
The Red Bull Half Court is a three-players a side basketball tournament that according to the organizers is on the lookout for the world’s best street-ballers from among 15,000 players across 20 countries.
Team TSM represented by Thisaramala Ekanayake, Benika Madhubashane, Lubna Morseth and Nihari Perera were women’s champions while Team Air Brothers comprising Nimesh Fernando, Rukshan Atapattu, Chanuka Shehan and Pawan Gamage won the men’s trophy.
According to the playing rules teams advance by winning games but teams could by what is called ‘Own the Court’ bonus can also qualify.
It means points are awarded to the team in each group that has scored the most points cumulatively across the games whereby even if a team doesn’t win most games, they still might make it through to the final.
“This tournament is especially significant because this is the first of its kind in Sri Lanka. Red Bull intends to hold this tournament on an annual basis to create a platform for local basketball talent,” a tournament official told the Sunday Observer.
He said the winners will contest the championship in Egypt in October.
The 400 players who contested the tournament represented 20 teams out of which four male and four female teams made it through to the finals.