OREANDA-NEWS. On April 04-05, 2008 Donetsk Witnessed a First Ever All-Star Match of Ukrainian Basketball Super League, reported the press-centre of SCM.
 
Professional leagues of the Northern America have been staging this sport show since 1933. Today the games are held in Europe and other continents. All-star game format in Ukraine is similar to the American NBA All-Star Game. Ukrainian and international stars playing for Ukrainian basketball clubs took part in the match.
 
Syegodnya together with the Ukrainian Basketball Federation set up a prize of UAH 10,000 for the winner of Dunk Contest organized at the All-Star Game. Five basketballers took part in the competition including Anatoliy Dubnyuk (Pulsar), Vitaliy Kovalenko (Budivelnik), Maksim Korniyenko (Dnepr), Pavel Ulyanko (Politekhnika), and Oli Famutimi (Khimik). Syegodnya awarded all participants with special prizes. Jury called Oli Famutimi the winner. The Canadian scored 135 points going 3 points ahead of Vitaliy Kovalenko.
 
- I planned to win. Having seen the contest participants list, I realized I had all chances to succeed. The most important thing was to overcome agitation. I failed to fight it completely but eventually everything was fine for me, - said Olu Famutimi, the dunk contest winner.
 
- Paper cards with 7, 8, 9, 10 figures were put on viewer seats. The spectators would raise them to show their mark to participants. They quickly found out how to put higher or lower marks with the same cards. For unimpressive dunk, they showed 6 (upturned 9), for superdunk – 100 (10 with “0” from another 10). For example, Famutimi got a 100 when he scored a dunk after flying over the head of his Khimik counterpart Wykeen Kelly!.. And altogether it was fun! Yes! Dunker contest in particular, and All-Star Game on the whole. We are looking forward for continuation in 2009, - said Aleksey Ponomarenko, editor of Sport column in Syegodnya.
 
For your information:
Since February 2007, ZAO Syegodnya Multimedia has been successor of ZAO Syegodnya Publishing House established in 1997.

Today ZAO Syegodnya Multimedia includes such newspapers as SYEGODNYA (with Kiev, Odessa, and national issues daily circulation of approximately 140,000 copies), Vecherkom, Donetskiye Novosti, Vecherniy Donetsk, a free weekly Kuryer, Salon, RIO, Priazovskiy Rabochiy, Mariupolskaya Nedyelya, Dom Sovyetov, and information edition Privet Rebyata. Also, the company runs online assets: information and news portal www.segodnya.ua and www.dnews.donetsk.ua, as well as production facilities in Vyshgorod, where an unmatched newspaper print house of Syegodnya Multimedia is in operation.