Half Time Show

KAZAN – The crowd was loudly cheering, but the game wasn’t even going on.

The four-man basketball-freestyle team, who entertained the crowd at the men’s basketball semi-final game, has one performance per day at soccer and basketball games during the 27th Summer Universiade in Kazan, Russia.

“We started in 2008 and now we perform all over Europe, Russia and the Ukraine,” said Max Komornyi, 21, the newest member to the Ukrainian team.

The halftime show of the Canada and Russia game featured crowd-pleasing tricks such as one freestyler spinning a basketball on each hand and balancing another ball on a pencil in his mouth.

A second team member, 22-year-old Dimitri Krivenko said, “The mouth trick is the most simple trick in freestyle.”

The most difficult trick the team does to entertain the audience is when Krivenko spins one ball on his right hand and another ball, at the same time, on his right elbow.

The group is featured in a number of YouTube videos which is where the organizing committee discovered them and asked them to perform at the Universiade.

All four members play basketball and got interested in basketball-freestyling as they were inspired by other freestylers that they see online and on TV. To learn, they simply practiced their tricks everyday.

“You can learn in two days, two months or two years,” Krivenko said. “It depends how much you want it.”

Kelcey Wright/FISU Young Reporter (CAN)