Hooplandia Organizers Set a Date for 2023
Mark Rivers acknowledged that a lot of things have changed since he and officials at the Big E and the Naismith Memorial Basketball of Fame first announced that the region would host a giant three-on-three basketball tournament to be called Hooplandia. Indeed, that announcement came late in 2019, just a few months before the arrival of COVID-19, which would eventually cancel large-scale events of all kinds and put plans for Hooplandia on ice — for 2020, 2021, and then 2022. But what hasn’t changed, said Rivers, a marketing and programming consultant to the Eastern States Exposition who has also worked with the Hall of Fame on tournaments, is that what he calls the ‘fundamentals’ are still in place.