Top Ranked 3×3 FIBA Basketball Player Marcel Esonwune Brings Attention To The New Olympic Sport

A normal day as a professional 3x3 athlete would usually start after 6pm when I get off my regular job at Omega Brokerage where I am an accountant. In the evening, the team meets up for practice where we would work out and go overplays. If we don't have practice, I work out on my own. To be a 3x3 athlete you have to be in tip-top shape, it’s a very physically demanding sport.

It’s amazing that 3x3 is now an official Olympic discipline. To even be considered in the pool of players who will go on to represent this wonderful country is an honor in its self.

It wasn’t my dream to be a basketball player.

When I moved to the United States in 2006, I enrolled in York college to get a good education. I noticed that the school has a soccer team so I decided to try out for the soccer team because I grew up playing soccer in Nigeria. During the tryout period for the soccer team, there a was a student vs staff basketball game where only students who where not on the team where allowed to play against faculty so I decided to play.

During that game the head coach of the basketball team was playing on the faculty team and was impressed by my rebounding ability. He reach out to me about joining the team but I thought he was joking because I had never played basketball in my life and now you want me to playing in a college team?

Next thing I knew I was playing college basketball instead of soccer.

My dream was to go to school get a good education and start my life. When I started playing in college I realized that I was good but not good enough to be a professional 5v5 athlete.

As I mentioned, I knew I was good but maybe not good enough to depend financially on basketball. So I pursued an accounting career, but continued to play basketball after college. The fast pace and physicality of the sport, that’s what attracted me to 3x3. It’s not like the traditional 5v5, it’s completely different. I started playing 3x3 in the 2016 Mexico City Masters event with team New York City where I was named the most spectacular player of that tournament. After the Mexico City Masters, our team didn’t go to another event, but Dominique Jones from Team Harlem, one of the top 3x3 teams in the world, reached out to me to join them in the 2018 season with our first tournament that year being the Mexico City Masters that year.

It’s a definitely a goal and a dream of mine to represent my birth country of Nigeria in any level of competition.

It feels amazing! It shows that hard work pays off. When I started playing, many players had already mastered their craft. Picking up a basketball for the very first time in college started me at a disadvantage, but that motivated me to out work my teammates and my competion.

That’s just what our team is, spectacular. We play hard and play smart. We do it in style and the fans love that. They like watching me because they know that I can and I will put a defender on a poster or block a shoot into the 5th row. Fans love my athleticism, it's exciting to watch.

I think once 3x3 hits the Olympic stage it's going to really take off. It attracts a different range of audiences and it will pick up tremendous steam. 3x3 games are short, they don't require fans to set aside 3 hours of their day to watch a game.

3x3 is much faster pace than 5v5. There are no coaches in 3x3. 3x3 games are only 10 mins or until someone scores 21, but it’s more like a 10 min sprint because of the constant movement and level of athletism required. The game doesn’t stop until there is a foul or a dead ball. One thing I can say personally is that I had to change my work out routines and diet to better adapt to the physical demand of the sport. The pace and the excitement lasts the entire duration of the game.