ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Basketball Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady founded the Ones Basketball League in 2022. He relaunched the league this summer with its OBL Battle of the Cities events in Orlando.<\/p>\n
The competition is exactly what it sounds like: one-on-one basketball, with games up to seven.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s you by yourself,\u201d said McGrady, who starred with the Orlando Magic and Houston Rockets in the 2000s. \u201cYou\u2019re out on the island by yourself, and that\u2019s a very challenging thing to do. Some guys go and crawl in their corner when they\u2019re out there playing five-on-five.\u201d<\/p>\n
Individual games in the OBL are played one-on-one, but each player is part of a four-person team. Eight teams began playing in May and the top six teams in total points advanced to last week\u2019s second round. Now the final four teams (Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta and Miami) have advanced to the July 1 finals and will play for $100,000 in total prize money.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about building a great brand here in North America, getting the attention of international resources and then taking it abroad,\u201d McGrady said. \u201cWe went through the gauntlet. We went through the grind. We\u2019re still grinding, but we\u2019re up above water and feeling good about ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each of the eight teams in the OBL represents a city. Hall of Famer Vince Carter, who starred for the Magic, Toronto Raptors and other NBA teams, owns Team Orlando, which was eliminated in May.<\/p>\n
Plenty of other NBA greats are involved with the league as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see the future in this,\u201d said Team Miami owner and Hall of Famer Tim Hardaway Sr., who starred for the Miami Heat and Golden State Warriors and other NBA teams. \u201cIt\u2019s just the beginning. It\u2019s going to grow really, really big. There are a lot of other one-on-one basketball players that are really, really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose guys did a great job of running their own tryouts and selecting their own teams,” McGrady said. “So, for me to see that they were that engaged, (it) lets me know they believe in the vision of what we\u2019re building.”<\/p>\n
The OBL will be back in Orlando at Oak Ridge High School on July 1, when the final four teams will compete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Basketball Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady founded the Ones Basketball League in 2022. He relaunched…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[58195,16738,64,63,726,142812,44,142813,2785,85,635,142814,39,87249],"class_list":["post-746824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-florida-sports","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-thomas-cook","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}