Nic firstly how did you get involved with 3 on 3 competitions?

We competed in the Red Bull Reign 3on3 tournament in Perth, which we entered for fun, and we went on to win and from there we were able to finish second in the Australian competition held in Victoria. This tournament was an opportunity that arose from that experience.

Where did the team name "Salads" come from?

Was a joke for the first tournament, we all had the same hair cut and the name stayed with us.

What was involved, and what is different about 3on3 basketball?

Around the world there are qualifier events, and challenger events: challenger games enables wild cards to get onto the qualifier circuits. This was a challenger event.  3on3 is apparently huge in Europe and we competed against teams from around the globe, including the 2nd in the world, and a Russian team who had a lot of hype because the rumour was they had been handpicked by the Russian basketball association. 

The Red Bull tournaments in Australia had similar rules to the regular game, but,  the FIBA 3on3 tournament in Penang had completely different rules. They don't  really call fouls except on a shot which was hard to adapt to: the Slovenian team that was ranked 2nd in the world actually thought there were too many fouls called. The ball was also sized differently, they use a size 6 ball that is weighted as a 7 so that there could be a lot more threes.

Where did you finish?

We finished 4th out of a tournament with 16 teams. I believe we were the first Aussie team to go to this comp so this was a great step forward even though we were just shy from qualifying for the Tokyo competition.

What was your favourite moment?

Being able to compete with Josh(Hawks SBL), Seva (Lakeside SBL) and Julian (Cockburn SBL) was just a lot of fun. If I had to pick one moment that sticks out, it would be participating in the dunk contest where I jumped over a car (it was a toy car from one of the shops - the crowd were expecting a "real car! ).

The team in the picture is Ljubljana (pronounced Libiyana) from Slovenia who are ranked second in the world and have been playing together for years, they finished 3rd in this tournament.

The Salads (Perth): Nic Cody, Seva Chan, Julian Pesava , Josh Garlepp

The Salads are now positioned to attend more tournaments throughout Asia to improve their ranking in the world (being better known also means a greater likelihood of securing future sponsorship  - you can see Ljubljana have their own jerseys with sponsors).