Baku to host Red Bull King of the Rock 2013 Basketball Qualifier
Baku, June 25 (AZERTAC). Baku Crystal Hall will host the global one-on-one basketball tournament with competitors qualifying from 25 countries On June 29. The finalist of the national qualifier will represent Azerbaijan at the forthcoming final tournament in San Francisco on September 28 in which only one player out of the 64 finalists will be crowned Red Bull King of the Rock. Azerbaijani Ministry of Sport and Youth supports the project.
Bigger and better than ever, Red Bull King of the Rock has expanded to qualifiers in 27 countries, including 33 in the United States. The 64 finalists will include players from the 24 international final qualifiers held in Azerbaijan, Austria, Bahrain, Brazil, Czech Republic, Egypt, Georgia, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Ukraine.
Both the qualifiers and finals will incorporate a regulation one-on-one basketball set-up where players go head-to-head on an outdoor court using a single elimination tournament bracket. There are only two options: win and continue on, or lose and go home. Winners will move on to face another player, so while pure hoops ability is essential, strategy and endurance will also play a major role in overall victory. Players have to be tough to make it to The Rock, but must also play smart, as five fouls equals an automatic loss. Games will last five minutes and scoring will be two and three pointers.
In 2010, Red Bull King of the Rock went down in history as the first official sporting event ever to be held on Alcatraz and the first time basketball had been played on The Rock since the inmates left the island over 50 years ago.
Though it operated as a high-security federal prison for a relatively short time, from only 1933 to 1963, Alcatraz has captivated the minds of the American public like few other places. Part of the allure is its visibility: “The Rock” looms as a craggy outpost in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, a mile and a half from the shores of a major metropolitan city.
But the mythology mostly comes from the notorious collection of inmates the prison held captive within its walls. Vicious men like Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Bumpy Johnson and Whitey Bulger were sent here, along with murderous Robert Stroud, legendarily known as the Birdman of Alcatraz (though ironically, the canaries he kept at Leavenworth penitentiary were banned from the island). These villains were truly the worst of the worst, and the bloody deeds that transpired on The Rock still haunt our collective imagination. To this day, the prison has been a frequent reference point in pop culture, appearing in films like The Rock, Escape from Alcatraz and The Birdman of Alcatraz.
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