Rapper-turned-actor Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson) and entertainment executive Jeff Kwatinetz will debut their three-on-three basketball league this month.
The Santa Monica-based BIG3 league is set to begin a 10-week season at Barclays Center in New York on June 25, which will culminate at the end of August with a championship in Las Vegas. Staples Center will host the eighth week of competition on Aug. 13. Each week will feature four games at one venue.
“Cube and I took a year to come up with this format,” said Kwatinetz, who also serves as chief operating officer of Ice Cube’s Cube Vision, a Santa Monica film and television production company.
Each of the eight teams has five players, a head coach, and one assistant coach. All players and coaches are former National Basketball Association players. Players are paid a base salary, reported to be $100,000, and share in the league’s revenue, with financial bonuses based on their team’s record.
Former Los Angeles Clippers star Corey Maggette will play in the league along with Allen Iverson and Chauncey Billups. Julius Irving, Clyde Drexler, and Gary Payton are among the coaches.
BIG3 has hired former Oakland Raiders Chief Executive Amy Trask to assume that role for the league, with Roger Mason Jr., former deputy executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, serving as commissioner and president.
The league will feature some innovative rules, including untimed games. The winner of each game must score 60 points and win by four points using traditional two- and three-point shots, plus a new four-point shot. Halftime will only begin when one of the teams reaches 30 points.
“What differentiates us is we’re playing a different game than the NBA. This is half-court basketball,” Trask said. “This is a beloved sport and it’s huge throughout the world.”
Three-on-three basketball has been growing in popularity. It was added to the 2018 Asian Games, a regional competition of mainly Olympic sports held every four years. The NCAA might designate it as a collegiate championship sport, and the International Basketball Federation is pushing to add it to the Olympics by 2020.
That type of popularity helped BIG3 sign a television deal with Fox Sports Media Group in which regular season matches will air tape-delayed on FS1 with championship games aired live on Fox. Financial Terms were not disclosed.
Kwatinetz, who also serves as chief executive of Santa Monica’s the Firm, added BIG3 is trying to negotiate media rights deals to air games in China, but nothing has been finalized.
Breaking Ground
The Los Angeles Football Club announced plans last month to build a $30 million soccer operations headquarters and training facility on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles. The practice facility will also house the team’s LAFC Academy.
“It’s a great institution and perfect place for our younger players to go and train,” said Tom Penn, LFAC president. “We looked for a place in the city of Los Angeles where we can have home-grown players that graduate from our academy on to the first team.”
The youth academy expects to draw from surrounding areas as well as two magnet schools on the campus. Cal State L.A. students will have opportunities to work with the team through internships and collaborations with university educational programs in kinesiology, nursing, and business. LAFC is also helping the university develop a new sports management program.
The facility is being privately financed by LAFC, which also pledged an additional $1.5 million to the university. Downtown’s Gensler has been hired to design the complex with Hunt Construction Group serving as construction manager.
Fight On
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has found its gladiators. The USC-run venue has partnered with Fountain Valley’s Roy Englebrecht Promotions, which organizes the popular Fight Club OC, to co-promote four monthly mixed martial-arts events, dubbed the Coliseum Gladiator 2017 MMA Championship Series, starting in July.
The events are to be hosted in a 3,000-seat stadium set to be constructed on the famed peristyle beneath the stadium’s Olympic torch.
“The relationship with Roy started years ago when we controlled the (Los Angeles) Sports Arena,” said Joe Furin, general manager of the Coliseum. “We thought that we lost the opportunity when LAFC took over the Sports Arena, but we adapted the idea to a gladiator-under-the-stars event.”
Although the stadium is undergoing a $270 million renovation, scheduled for completion by 2019, Furin said the event will utilize parts of the facility not affected by construction.
Staff reporter David Nusbaum can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 556-8336. The Business of Sports column appears in the first issue of each month.
