Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Russell Westbrook formally announced that he is walking away from the game for good. However, Ice Cube would like to give him another shot to play in Big3. Appearing on The Pat McAfee Show, the renowned American hip-hop artist made a strong pitch to recruit the former NBA superstar to his 3-on-3 basketball league. "We'll give him a week," Ice Cube said. "People want to see him play, regardless. If he plays in the NBA or not, people want to see him play. He still has millions of fans who would love to see him come out and play in the BIG3.”
“They’re crazy not to use our athletes as the U.S. Olympic team in 3-on-3,” Ice Cube told me. “The last two Olympics have been a disaster for USA when it comes to what USA Basketball has been putting together to represent the US. I hope they have a ‘come-to-Jesus moment’ and realize that we have the best 3-on-3 players in the world. It’s not even close. They should use our athletes to represent the U.S., especially on U.S. soil. Will they do that or not? Egos may win and prevail, and the U.S. will suffer because of that.”
“We want to get to 24 [teams], maybe even 34,” Ice Cube told me. “We want to grow the league. We don’t want it to be irresponsible. But we want to grow the league at a pace where we feel that it’s going to get a bigger footprint in people’s minds when it comes to the BIG3. We want to make sure that we have a space in everybody’s minds when it comes to major sports.”
The Big3 averaged 558,000 viewers last summer and reached a peak of 850,000 viewers during the playoffs, a 48-percent increase from 2024. This season, with games televised on CBS and BET, Big3 games are averaging 565,000 viewers, according to league representatives. How has the Big3 managed to stick around, mostly without full NBA support? Much of that involves Cube, and how he’s attracted fans via his music and movies since the 1980s.
Additionally, Clyde Drexler has not only served as a Big3 coach, but he is also the current commissioner of the league, having held the position since 2018, succeeding Roger Mason Jr. Drexler defined the league with four words. “In Cube I trust,” he said. “We’re only here because of Ice Cube, so this league, this new sport that they’ve invented, has been nothing short of spectacular.”
Advertisement
He sat in a private room reflecting on his success as a hip-hop mogul, a movie star and the BIG3 co-founder. Considering Ice Cube’s life-long ambitions, it seemed expected he would maintain a bold vision regarding his summer 3-on-3 basketball league. “With the right capital injected in the right areas, we can do a lot more and be one of the biggest leagues in the world,” Ice Cube told me. “We’re not just looking at the U.S. We’re looking worldwide.”
The BIG3 is valued at $290 million after becoming the first publicly traded professional sports league in American history last month by partnering with a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (Graf Global Corp.). In 2024, the BIG3 sold four of its eight franchises in Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit and Houston to various ownership groups for $10 million each. BIG3 has also partnered with the Prostate Cancer Foundation this year, which has included facilitating testing signups outside of venues and league-endorsed PSAs.
No wonder Ice Cube appeared in a pleasant mood before BIG3’s recent games at the University of Southern California’s Galen Center. Ice Cube, otherwise known as O’Shea Jackson Sr., still spoke in a serious tone with me in an arena conference room. Then, Ice Cube declined to bask in BIG3’s accomplishments and proclaim that “today was a good day” as he did in his heralded song. Instead, Ice Cube focused more on BIG3’s upcoming goals.
“We want to expand,” Ice Cube told me. “To really unlock what this league can do, we want to have more than eight teams, even more than 12. The traditional way is just to sell teams and grow like that, which is cool. But it makes you make deals that you need to make instead of deals that you should make.”
“We want to get to 24 [teams], maybe even 34,” Ice Cube told me. “We want to grow the league. We don’t want it to be irresponsible. But we want to grow the league at a pace where we feel that it’s going to get a bigger footprint in people’s minds when it comes to the BIG3. We want to make sure that we have a space in everybody’s minds when it comes to major sports.” How soon can expansion happen? “Who knows,” Ice Cube told me. “There is always an interest. We sold four teams. We have to sell four more. Once we sell those four, then 12 will be on the horizon. I can’t put a number on it because we want to do it in the smartest and most responsible way with the right team owners at the right price.”
Advertisement
The Big3 basketball league, co-founded by rapper Ice Cube, is eyeing a $290 million valuation as it plans to go public later this year. The league announced Friday that it has reached a deal with Graf Global Corp., described as a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, that will offer fans a chance to buy stock in the league. They are targeting being available on one of the major stock exchanges in the fourth quarter of 2026 under the ticker TONT (for 3-on-3). "You can't participate in the upside of the team besides winning," Ice Cube told Bloomberg. "And we need the fans for the league to be successful, so it's a match made in heaven."
Shaquille O'Neal has released five studio albums. One of them, “Shaq Diesel,” went platinum. Another, “Shaq Fu: Da Return,” went gold. His track “Biological Didn’t Bother” was a terrifically told story about the absence of his biological father from his life. It also gave a glimpse into what kind of father he would later become. What made O’Neal shine, however, was his collaborations. The list of artists he worked with in that era is long and elite. He worked with Phife from A Tribe Called Quest. He worked with EPMD, one of the best rap groups ever. He worked with DJ Quik, Ice Cube, Black Thought, Peter Gunz, Method Man and RZA. He has also worked with Nas and Jay-Z.
That Ice Cube shared the cover of a national sports magazine with O’Neal was fitting, because another one of his favorite basketball lines features Shaquille O'Neal on the song “Wicked,” track No. 4 on “The Predator” album. “Pass me the pill. And I’ll slam dunk it like Shaquille O’Neal.” O’Neal acknowledged Cube has shouted him out multiple times in songs. He said the connection between rappers and basketball players is natural. “Because it comes from the same place,” O’Neal said. “Rappers wanna be NBA players, and NBA players wanna be rappers. … It’s always been connected. On the way to the game, you got your headphones on and listen to your music. After the game, you listen to music. When they’re in the studio, they’re watching games. We’re married, we’re synonymous with each other, and it will always be like that. “I always said, on the way to the court, I wanted to be LL Cool J. Then, when I got to the court, I wanted to be Dr. J.”
The BIG3 basketball atmosphere is one of a West Coast summer-style block party — quite literally — bursting with frenetic hip-hop energy brought straight to the hardwood. At the center is legendary rapper and Hollywood A-lister Ice Cube, who, between games, stands before a BIG3-branded backdrop in the bowels of the Intuit Dome, greeting families and flashing Westside hand signs as cameras click. “It takes a village; all these people have honed their skills to be the best,” Ice Cube, the league’s co-owner and founder, said of the atmosphere.