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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.”
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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.
“It was a dream come true, not too far from where I grew up,” Ice Cube said. “So to have a league like this, right at the house, is just beautiful.” After seven years of unaffiliated teams, the BIG3 shifted to a city-based model to cultivate loyal fan bases and sell franchises to local owners. Using L.A. as the blueprint — with a $10-million price tag — the hope is to bring long-term stability to the league. “We’re going to these eight cities every year,” Ice Cube said. “We can plan long-term, hopefully grow the league to other cities, [who] want to get in on the act.”
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Ice Cube’s Big3 three-on-three basketball league took over the Intuit Dome in Inglewood on Saturday. “It’s our first year, we’re just getting started,” Howard said. “We’re looking forward to keeping it going. Obviously, the first year is always a little difficult — trying to get to know each other — but we’re doing a great job.”
Ice Cube: The basketball world really does hold Charles Barkley career over Robert Horry. The way he's treated and the way what he means to basketball. At the end of the day, the fans get it right. The players who were star players that didn't get a championship are treated like superstars.
The Big3 has no use for Caitlin Clark mania. Ice Cube’s basketball league fired courtside commentator Rachel DeMita after roughly one year, according to Front Office Sports, with the “final straw” being when DeMita tweeted about Clark’s performance against the Liberty this past Saturday while she was working during a league game. DeMita, a popular basketball commentator with nearly 279,000 followers on X and at least 1 million on Instagram, posted eight times that day — which she indicated was her birthday — and all involved Clark.
The Big3, according to a letter DeMita read in her video, was “dismayed and disappointed” by her posts about the competing league during the same time the 3-on-3 basketball league was broadcasting live on Saturday. DeMita added that she didn’t want to make excuses and she’ll “take [the firing] on the chin.”