Big3 cancels season due to coronavirus, will return in 2021
Ice Cube’s Big3 basketball league is taking a year off.
The league announced that it was canceling the 2020 season on Monday due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will instead focus on the 2021 season.
“We tried everything in our power to give fans a nice 2020 season, but with a long list of obstacles, we decided to shift our focus to having a great 2021 season with our fans in the stands,” Ice Cube said in a statement. “Our goal from day one has always been to provide a remarkable experience full of top-level competition and entertainment.”
The Big3 was set to enter its fourth season this summer, and had plenty of new changes to the 3-on-3 professional league ready to go. The Big3 lowered its age limit from 27 to 22, was planning to hold open tryouts for all athletes and was ready to start using a new all red ball called the “fireball.”
The Big3 is still working on a reality show-style tournament, “Big3: Not in My House,” and hopes to have it premier sometime before the 2021 season. Production on that, however, has also been halted due to the coronavirus.
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CBS Sports, the league said, will continue to broadcast games during the 2021 season, too.
There were more than 1.5 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States as of Monday afternoon, according to The New York Times, and more than 90,000 deaths attributed to it.
“We are frustrated and disappointed that we can’t see Big3 played this year,” co-founder Jeff Kwatinetz said in a statement. “We thank CBS for working with us and extending our relationship to next summer. Cube and I can do a lot, we started this league from scratch and developed an entirely new sport, FIREBALL3.
“With that said, we are not infectious disease experts and cannot control decisions of local and state governments."
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