The Big3 Is Here To Save The Day And Is Planning To Give Us Actual Basketball!!
(Yahoo Sports) - The Big3 plans to launch a quarantined, reality show-style three-on-three tournament in April to help curb the nation’s appetite for basketball in the aftermath of the coronavirus sports hiatus, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
The founders of the league — hip-hop icon and actor Ice Cube and entertainment executive Jeff Kwatinetz — have been having ongoing conversations with multiple TV networks since late last week to broadcast the tournament, which is expected to also garner international interest, sources said.
The preseason tournament will feature 16 to 22 players from The Big3 who are negative for the coronavirus, and they will be quarantined in Los Angeles, sources said.
Former NBA standouts such as Joe Johnson, Zach Randolph and Greg Oden could participate in the tournament, but many details need to be worked out.
To assure the league is operating under safe conditions, players will be quarantined in a large home provided by the league, sources said. A basketball court/facility will be built on site. If a player breaks quarantine at any point during the tournament, he would be eliminated and removed from the premises, sources said.
The games and the players’ daily lives will be captured on camera for added drama and storylines. The production crew would be stationed nearby but offsite from the players.
There would be seven rounds of games, with teammates reshuffling after the first round. When a player accumulates three losses, he is eliminated. Cash prizes totaling millions of dollars will be awarded for first-, second- and third-place individual winners.
Did Ice Cube do it again or did Ice Cube do it again?!??! Just when things were looking grim and hope was starting to fade, here comes the Big3 like the goddamn Kool Aid man to give us some fresh basketball content we as a society very much crave. When Adam Silver floated the idea of a single game for charity during the hiatus I'll admit, it gave me a half chub. Reading this story about what Ice Cube plans to do though, that has me big time flustered and rather aroused. April isn't even that far away! You're telling me we are combining reality TV with basketball? Sign me the fuck up! Putting all them in a mansion together like some sort of Real World/Big Brother reboot is a content and blogger's dream. Talk about the best of both worlds. We're all knee deep in trashy reality TV at the moment already so if you're telling me you can combine that with some quality Big3 basketball, I couldn't be more in.
If we're being honest, the Big3 has been nothing but a slam dunk ever since it first because a thing. The quality of basketball is getting more and more legit every season, they are filling arenas all over the country, and this type of forward thinking is how you get an alternative league to stick. If you aren't watching these games over the summer while the NBA is on break then you don't know what you're missing
So thank you Ice Cube. From the bottom of my basketball missing heart thank you for doing this. Hopefully all the logistics get worked out and this actually happens because now that I've read about it I need it. We all need it.