Prove your skills and get chance to meet Deng

Jul 10 2008 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

BUDDING Liverpool basketballers are invited to Greenbank Academy on Sunday at 10am as Nike aim to unearth the next Luol Deng.

Under the banner ‘Midnight Madness’ Nike is asking Liverpool’s ballers to come down to Greenbank Academy to prove their commitment, desire, skill and dedication in the under-21 competition to discover the UK’s future basketball star.

The winner of the competition will be flown out to the US to train with UK Olympic ambassador and NBA superstar Luol Deng and spend a week in his company seeing what it takes to reach the pinnacle of the sport.

The Liverpool team that amasses the most points on Sunday will go through to regional finals before the final 40 players are invited to Nike’s MM Bootcamp, where Luol and selectors will decide which 20 go head to head at finals night.

“The panel of Nike judges will be looking for the future creators, innovators and fearless leaders with a relentless, unstoppable game.

The finals night, hosted at Wembley Arena on Saturday, August 16, will be played out in front of 3,000 spectators, one of those 20 will have proved their worth and be on the verge of flying out to the US with Luol.

Leo Sandino-Taylor of Nike said: “Midnight Madness is the hot point for UK basketball.

“ This year we’ve really taken the event up a gear to focus the attention on finding the next British basketball superstar.

“We’re still going to be sending a team out to compete against the US, but we really want to give the kid who can prove it the most, the chance to change their future”

For further information regarding Midnight Madness visit www.midnight-madness.com