OAKLAND — Popular 3-on-3 basketball league BIG3 returns to Oakland to tip off its seventh season on Saturday, and opening weekend will feature a few familiar faces for basketball fans in the Bay Area.
Former Golden State Warriors Leandro Barbosa, Nick Young and Jason Richardson are scheduled to play in games on Saturday at the Arena. Stephen Jackson and Ricky Barry will be on the sidelines as coaches along with former Seattle Supersonics guard and Oakland native Gary Payton.
Ice Cube, co-founder of the BIG3, said he is happy to bring the league back to the Bay Area.
“The Bay is like going over to your cousin’s house,” Cube said in an interview with FOX40 Sacramento. “I’ve been getting support from the Bay in music, movies, television and now sports since I first started. … Everybody ran from Oakland and that’s sad. We want to run to Oakland and bring some love, and show that we appreciate the city and the sports fans in the Bay. We want to celebrate the Bay”
The league played in the same venue in 2018. Games are played in a half court setting, and have unique rules such as a four-point shot and the winners being the first to 50 points.
The league is known for being the place where journeymen at the end of their careers could come to continue playing hoops.
In the first two years of the league, players couldn’t be younger than 30-years-old. But the league has since lowered the minimum age to 22.
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But the league has said in the past that it does not want to be labeled as “Old man basketball.”
“These are guys who can still play at an NBA level,” BIG3 commissioner Clyde Drexler told the Bay Area News Group in 2018. “So we’re hoping that a bunch of these guys will be re-launched back into the NBA.”
For some, the league did help launch their careers back into the NBA.
In 2021, former NBA All-Star Joe Johnson played well enough in the BIG3 to earn himself a 10-day contract with the Boston Celtics.
The league made headlines in March when Cube reportedly offered WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark a $5 million contract to play in eight games. Clark ultimately declined and was drafted by the Indiana Fever in April.
Oakland is the first stop in a 10-game season that will see teams travel around the country. Saturday’s game will be nationally televised on CBS.