Why Ice Cube’s BIG3 Basketball League Is Focused On Chicago And Dallas

Throughout its first three years, Ice Dice’s BIG3 basketball league was a touring highway present, visiting completely different locations each weekend of the summer season.

For the 2022 season, which debuted June 18, the 3-on-3 league is taking part in its first two weeks in Chicago, and the final six of the common season are in Dallas.

The change in technique is basically a results of penalties of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Though we’re turning the nook within the pandemic, we’re not out of the woods but,” mentioned BIG3 CEO Chris Hannan. “And so working round metropolis to metropolis with completely different kind of native and state laws, it’s onerous. So for us, the most effective factor for us to do was proceed to maneuver round however scale back the overall cities.”

Chicago and Dallas have been chosen partially as a consequence of their centralized places.

“Our coaches and gamers are situated all through the nation,” mentioned BIG3 chairman of the board Amy Trask.

It makes the logistics — which entails 72 gamers and coaches, together with Dr. J, Gary Payton and George Gervin, arriving every weekend — simpler however not essentially cheaper.

“In some regards you’re simply substituting some bills for others,” Trask mentioned. “You don’t should put the courtroom and the tools and the uniforms on a truck and get them elsewhere … however you do should discover a place to retailer them.”

Trask, who beforehand served as CEO of the Raiders from 1997 to 2013, and Hannan mentioned the energy of the Dallas and Chicago sports activities markets made them excellent places for the 2022 regular-season video games.

“They’ve been two of the pillars of the BIG3 since 2017,” Hannan mentioned.

Within the 2019 common season, Dallas hosted the BIG3 Ballout, which included on-court performances by hip hop artists T.I. and Yella Beezy and a sequence of clinics for space youth all through the weekend.

“We have been welcomed with open arms by Mark Cuban,” Trask mentioned.

Limiting the video games to Dallas’ Comerica Middle, the place the G League’s Texas Legends play, and Chicago, the place the video games are performed at Credit score Union 1 Area on the campus of the College of Illinois-Chicago, additionally made sense due to a loaded summer season. Locations across the nation are enthusiastically internet hosting many indoor occasions once more, and securing area area has turn into tougher.

“It was based mostly on venue availability,” Hannan mentioned. “Live shows are again. Final summer season, venues nonetheless weren’t getting booked.”

After the 2022 common season concludes in Chicago after which Dallas, the BIG3 contests are headed farther and farther east. The playoff video games are slated to be held in Tampa and Atlanta, after which the Atlantis resort within the Bahamas hosts an All-Star Recreation.

“There’s a circulation to our season,” Hannan mentioned.

Two years in the past the circulation of the BIG3 — like most different issues in life — was interrupted.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the league didn’t play in 2020.

Then, final yr’s video games have been slated to happen in Las Vegas — a metropolis with the services and infrastructure to create a bubble environment if wanted and a vacation spot inside driving distance of Los Angeles, the house of many staffers, together with Ice Dice — and New Orleans, the place the BIG3 has sturdy connections.

When Covid-19 spiked in New Orleans in 2021, the league was compelled to shift video games to Dallas, Chicago and Milwaukee.

Wanting towards the long run, subsequent season ought to normalize, and there’s a robust probability that it’s going to function an growth of groups (from 12 to 16) and an growth of its weekly locations.

“Finally, we’ll transfer again round to fifteen, 16 cities, however this yr I’m actually proud of our schedule.” Hannan mentioned. “It was only a sensible transfer for us this yr.”