Full court press

BOK Center to host Week 3 of BIG3

BIG3 basketball is coming to Tulsa on July 9, and, as the name suggests, it’s kind of a big deal.

In another bit of evidence proving that our city is becoming a major destination for elite-level sports, the BOK Center will host the new three-on-three professional basketball league featuring retired NBA stars as players, including 11-time NBA All-Star Allen Iverson, with Hall of Fame legends such as Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Clyde Drexler, and George Gervin as coaches.

The brainchild of rapper/actor Ice Cube, BIG3 has eight teams and started its 10-week season on June 25 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. There will be four games slated every Sunday in a different city, leading up to the playoffs on August 20 in Seattle and then the championship game on Saturday, August 26, at the new T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The games will be televised the next night on Fox Sports 1 as a sort of a “Monday Night Basketball,” except for the final, which will be televised live on Fox.

The Week 3 games at the BOK Center, which also hosted the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament in March, will be the first in a city that doesn’t have an NBA team, followed by Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky (home of the University of Kentucky Wildcats) in Week 7, and of course, the final two weeks in Seattle (Key Arena, former home of the Thunder) and Vegas.

In addition to getting a chance to see some former NBA stars, who, in addition to Iverson, also include guys such as Kenyon Martin, Mike Bibby, Rashard Lewis, and former Tulsa 66er Rasual Butler, the three-on-three game adds some interesting wrinkles, not the least of which is the half-court format.

The teams have clever names such as 3-Headed Monsters, Killer 3s, and 3’s Company, and the action is not based on a clock. Games are played until one side reaches 60, with teams having to win by at least two points, and halftime comes when the first squad hits 30. There is a 14-second shot clock and there’s even a 4-point shot, which occurs when a player makes a basket while touching one of three small 4-point circles located a few feet beyond the 3-point arc.

One note about Iverson: the 2001 NBA MVP, now 42, is the player/coach for 3’s Company, and in his team’s 61–51 win over the Ball Hogs in Brooklyn, he put much more emphasis on his coaching role than playing, only stepping onto the floor for nine minutes.

The first-week games were entertaining, competitive, and even featured plenty of intense physical play (hand-checking is allowed) and trash-talking. The players are not treating this like a glorified All-Star tournament—they are clearly going all out and competing hard for the prize money that will be awarded to the BIG3 champions.

Big3 at BOK Center July 9, starting at 2pm:
Game 1: Power vs. 3-Headed Monsters
Game 2: Killer 3s vs. Tri-State
Game 3: Ball Hogs vs. Ghost Ballers
Game 4: Trilogy vs. 3’s Company

Tickets available at www.bokcenter.com

For more from John, read his article on Tulsa Athletic.