Latest update January 1st, 2025 1:00 AM
Latest News
It goes down in Linden tonight
-Teams must win, or go home!
By Edison Jefford
If you claim to love local basketball, then there is absolutely no reason why you should be absent from the Mackenzie Sports Club (MSC) Court in Linden tonight where the biggest tournament to ever hit these shores intensifies with the start of the knockout rounds.
The best Guyanese ‘ballers’ to combine the official format of the game with ‘scrubby’ skills will be lacing their sneakers to gear for the Super 16 playoffs of the Mackeson Smooth Moves 3-on-3 Basketball Championships in a colossal battle for the whopping $1m prize.
If you are not a basketball fan, then come for the vibes and the fan ‘specials’ that Ansa McAl has committed to issuing to include patrons in the competition. The point is that the tournament, as is the case nationwide, is not just about basketball, but entertainment and community development.
Thanks to the Mackeson Smooth Moves event, which represents the biggest single purse on offer in any version of the game in Guyana, many community basketball courts that held preliminaries in New Amsterdam, Bartica and Albouystown, received much-needed sprucing up. And to cap it all off, entrance to the games has been free and open to the communities.
The momentum, therefore, has been generated with each of the 16 teams left in the competition having their own support-base that is likely to descend in the Mining Town tonight to support the team that is carrying their hopes and dreams of becoming part of history.
The night will get underway with Kester Gomes’, Knights, taking on Full Clip. Knights were one of the easy qualifiers in Georgetown, while King Street Ballers, another Georgetown-based team faces Assassin in the second game to get things officially underway.
Linden has its representative Unknowns, Jets and Victory Valley Royals with Jets and Royals in better positions to qualify for the last eight than Unknowns, who faces Moses Pacesetters in one of their biggest games of the tournament. Stopping shooting guard, Reyon Cummings will be the first priority assignment for the defence of Unknowns in this game.
Fan Base!!! This female fan shoots for a cash prize during the Mackeson Smooth Moves 3-on-3 tournament while another awaits her turn. Brands Coordinator, Nigel Worrel has said that there will be more ‘specials’ for fans to feel a part of the tournament tonight.
Royals’ combination includes seasoned club ‘ballers’, Orlan Glasgow and shooting guard, Chris Williams in what has been their main offense so far. The duo has led the team to this stage of the competition and will face A Slash with Jason Squires at the helm.
Then there is the Jets’ versus Cronics game, in no chronological order in this preview. Jets’ huge destruction against Royals in the Brusche Classic semi-final offers us enough clues as to what is a likely outcome against a scrubby-savvy, Cronics team. Ryan ‘Showtime’ Melville and his ‘big man’, Earl O’Neil will certainly be looking to make an impression.
The pride of the ghetto, the Albouystown-based, Above the Rim with Nicko Fraser, Collis Pluck and Morris Hilliman takes on Bartica. Above the Rim did not seem as dangerous as was thought in the preliminary rounds. They have to take into consideration the fact that Bartica has noted their intentions of reaching further in the tournament through upsets.
The curtains of the Super 16 playoffs comes down after one of the favourite teams in the contest, Pacesetters ‘A’ with Naylon Loncke, Stephan Gillis, Travis Burnett and Royston Siland takes on New Amsterdam’s Team Demolition and Ryan Gullen with his Pitbulls quartet play Den Amstel in the two final games tonight in the famed Mining Town.
Throughout the games at specific intervals, Mackeson will be bringing the vibes with promotions and other giveaways. When the dust settles, only eight teams will have their names advanced and those teams would have taken another step closer to the big bucks.
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
Guyana recorded over 10 000 dengue cases in 2024
Kaieteur News- Guyana recorded just over 10,000 dengue cases in 2024, Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony revealed during an... more
Breaking the Chains of Poverty: A need for political will
By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- The year 2024 has underscored a grim reality: poverty continues to be an unyielding... more
Weekend Cartoon
