Alan Walls - Founder & Editor-in-Chief - Big 3x3 Fan
Alan is a Canadian-American international basketball coach and administrator with 30+ years of experience on the youth, high school, NCAA, professional and national team levels in 17 countries on five continents. Walls most recently was the 5x5 head coach of the Malta men's national team the finished second in the 2022 FIBA Championship for Small Countries and the 2023 Games of the Small States of Europe. Walls has worked with the national federations of Malta, Turkey, Romania, Palestine, Mongolia and El Salvador as well as coached or conducted camps and clinics throughout the United States – including his native Hawaii – Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Argentina, China, Hong Kong, Kenya and Israel. In 2010 Walls was tasked by the Turkish Basketball Federation to be the camp director of the FIBA Children of the World Basketball Camp at the FIBA World Championships. Walls is a resident of El Salvador working on basketball-related projects around the world.
3x3 has been a basketball format long played in streets and gyms across the world, albeit in a less formal way. Starting in the late 2000s, 3x3 game rules started to become standardized throughout the United States, most notably through the Gus Macker and Hoop It Up tournament series, which held large events across the country that included teams and players from all skill levels. In 1992, Adidas launched its now-discontinued streetball competition. Since then, the number of 3x3 events and competitions has been steadily growing around the world.
FIBA made the decision to first test 3x3 at the 2007 Asian Indoor Games in Macau. Further test events were held in April 2008 in the Dominican Republic and October 2008 in Indonesia. The international debut was at the 2009 Asian Youth Games: 19 teams competed in the boys' tournament and 16 teams competed in the girls' tournament. All games were held at Anglican High School in Tanah Merah, Singapore. 3x3 made its worldwide competitive debut at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in Singapore. The competition featured 20 teams in both boys' and girls' categories. The competition was held at the Youth Space. Since then, world championships in both open and U18 categories are held regularly.
FIBA launched a full program to make 3x3 a standalone game with its own format and regular competitions. 3x3 debuted as an Olympic sport at the 2020 Summer Olympics. The 3x3 basketball variation has also been used in several tournaments like Spokane Hoopfest, and the Nike 3ON3 Tournament.
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