DEW NBA 3X tour concluded with a championship tournament at Venice Beach earlier in October. NBA legend Baron Davis and Los Angeles Lakers players Julius Randle and Jordan Clarkson stopped by to witness the teams compete for $20,000 and a spot in the USA Basketball 3×3 National Tournament.
The tour visited six major cities in the United States, including New York City, Chicago, and Miami. The men and women’s tournament winners of each city earned a trip to Los Angeles to battle for the championship. For the women’s, the Los Angeles team “Team Issa Bucket” became the national champions. The team included Brianna Barrett, who played basketball for USC from 2012-2016.
Chicago squad “Team Stars and Stripes” won the Men’s Championship. L.A. native and former Princeton forward Kareem Maddox aided “Team Stars and Stripes” to a victory.
Internet sensation and NBA Impersonator Brandon “B-dot A-dot” Armstrong was the ambassador and David “D-Stroy” John was the host of the championship.
“Basketball was just a fun game overall. Dew NBA 3X is open to the public, that just makes it even much better,” Armstrong said. “When people see basketball courts and music and different artists and celebrities just accessible…it attracts them towards the event.”
According to Armstrong, the games are 10 minutes long and the first team to have 21 points wins. The championship weekend started on Saturday with pool play and Sunday was the single-game elimination playoffs.
The DEW NBA 3X tour not only celebrates basketball, but the unique cultures and traditions that inhabit the cities it visits. Armstrong refers to it as a “fair of basketball.”
“The atmosphere was dope. It’s so much stuff going on at one time,” Armstrong said. “You can never be bored and you want to do everything just more than once.”
Along with the 3-on-3 basketball games, fans could compete to win prizes in the Dew NBA 3X 2K video game tournament. Fans also had a chance to experience the virtual experience called ‘#GotHandles’ which features streetball legend and international hoops entertainer The Professor.
Armstrong competed for the DEW NBA 3X Tour last year.
“We ended up making the quarterfinals and ended up losing just because we lost with height and stuff like that,” he said.
Armstrong noted that the best way to play 3-on-3 basketball is to have good defense and to play as a team.
“Sometimes a lot of teams, they get into a lot of one-on-one basketball, which slows the game down,” Armstrong said. “When you’re doing all this dribbling … and it’s one-on-one and you miss the shot, now they got the rebound, kick it out to the guy in the corner for a wide open three because you’re lagging.”
This marks the second year of the Dew NBA 3X tour; last year’s tour stopped in Houston, Atlanta and Dallas.
