By TERRY LYONS
NEW YORK – Traditionally the summer months do not bring about much activity in the sports business world. The juggernauts of the winter sports calendar, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League end their seasons with the crowing of a new champion at the annual NBA Finals and the awarding of the Stanley Cup, the most coveted trophy in all of sport.
When the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Golden State Warriors accepted their hardware, sports execs closed the books on hockey and men’s basketball for 2016-17 and the respective league drafts turned the page to look towards the fall and 2017-18 when the two leagues begin training camp.
Allen Iverson of 3’s Company reacts in the game against the Ball Hogs during week one of the BIG3 three on three basketball league at Barclays Center on June 25, 2017 in New York City. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
###
At about that same time, after a summer of leisurely baseball and some down-time for vacation, the sports industry awakes with a season of sports conferences, delving into the world of Sports facility management, ticketing, Media and Tech – a regular “You-Name-It,” for sports industry executives looking for some insights and new trends.
Not so fast, you say?
As the calendar pages turned to the first days of summer in the city, along came #HASHTAG SPORTS, a three-day sports conference currently being staged in New York at The Times Center, adjacent to the offices of The New York Times. One quick look at the Hashtag Sports agenda and the thought of the sport of basketball taking any kind of break was immediately tossed aside, like a smelly old towel in the gym.
You see, the Hashtag Sports conference began one day after The Big 3 debuted in Brooklyn. It began on the same day the highlights of that new professionally staged 3×3 venture aired on FS-1 in the households in the United States that have such a network. It began on the same day when the NBA, at the mercy of Dick Clark Productions and broadcast partner TNT, staged its first NBA Awards extravaganza which coincidentally aired head-to-head with the upstart 3-on-3 highlight show. Hashtag Sports took advantage of those facts and began their conference with the NBA’s former Commissioner and sports marketing maven turned sports tech entrepreneur and investor David Stern in the keynote slot of 9am. Stern was followed on stage by the newest Commissioner in all of sports, Roger Mason Jr., a former NBA player, NBA Players Association veep and the hand-picked player/exec/basketball conduit for The Big 3, a venture backed by the entertainer, O’Shea Jackson – d.b.a. – “Cube,” or “Ice Cube.”
Stern was asked many of the same old questions he’s been asked hundreds of times since he turned the keys of the NBA over to his successor, Adam Silver, who spent the Monday prepping for his MVP presentation to Michael Westbrook. Stern spoke of the many new waves of technology – from wearable by the athletes to consumable by the fans. He is bullish on anything that will enhance a fans tendency to watch a game – be it cricket to rugby to hoops. Stern is betting big on the next wave of tech doing exactly what radio, black and white tv, color tv, cable tv, digital and every other tech known to man has done. They’ve made the grade by attracting sports fans to their products, both first screen and second screen to eventually 100 screens or no screens – take your pick on how you will consume the next sport or the old sport.
Because of the immediacy of The Big 3 debut in nearby Brooklyn, Stern was asked whether The Big 3 is a complement or a competitor to the NBA?
When is there simply too much basketball, whether it be the women’s game Stern launched on his watch, plugging and protecting the WNBA brand ’til this day, or summer league ball or the new 3×3 venture – albeit that the founders of that league smartly realized the limitations of the very player/product and scheduled it for only one 60-point game a week for the players on eight league-owned teams?
Stern viewed it very much as a complement to the NBA, as he noted “there’s something going on ‘out there,’ because people are trying to find out how they can have ‘sports’ on their air, on their digital media platforms, because live sports attracts viewers,” he said matter of factly honestly and outwardly hoping that the news cycle will one day “return to normalcy” when cable news outlets doesn’t draw the eye balls of viewers watching a government gone haywire (my words, not his).
“It’s either news or sports,” he said emphatically, “That’s it, and I think sports is a stronger and more continuous lead group, sitting in a sweet spot. I’ve always said, sports has always been the canary in the mine. It always leads the way, no matter what technology comes along.”
Stern headed off stage and Mason, once a deputy executive director and a VP exec player for the NBA players’ union, was frequently on the opposite side of the negotiating table from Stern at many a contentious collective bargaining session, took his seat for Hashtag Sports’ second keynote presentation.
Mason was impressive and humbly set the stage for his tenure as President and Commissioner of The Big 3, proclaiming he learned much from the NBA’s former commissioner along with many a mentor at the NBA players union, especially current exec director, Michele Roberts. He laid out the plans for the fledgling pro hoops league, hitting the talking points the Big 3 has been hawking as they prepared for the June 25th launch of the league. The buzzwords were “competitive basketball” and “real competition.”
Ridiculously, the media news releases hyped the results with phrases like “highly anticipated,” “hugely successful,” and “star-studded collections of fans,” possibly alluding to Whoopi Goldberg, the only celeb outside of some former NBA players and the Cube himself, with all due credit to LL Cool J, who was also in the house.
The early news reports were mostly positive but they came with by-lines from the fashionista and sneakerazzi media who were much more attuned to the star-power of league player-captain-coaches like Allen Iverson, (42), the face of the publicity efforts and ticket sellers, that they were to the fact Iverson scored only two points and shot 1-for-6 in a game where he notched his first-ever coaching win. Frankly, he was great but his game was pathetic.
There were a few major areas of concern for Mason and they were things largely ignored by the game-day reporting.
- Length of the games and the event itself
- Horrible shooting, chalked up to “rusty” aging players
- Injuries
The answers to those issues remain widely unknown to most basketball fans because FS-1 chose to tape-delay the four-game, five-hour+ epic of a day, which ran from 1:20pm-6:15pm, and included a halftime act at Barclay’s Center. Mason indicated that the league had hoped for games lasting about 30-minutes, with the winning score of 60 set to achieve that goal. It was too early to address the issue for this week, maybe this season, but it is safe-to-say a league of journeymen and aging stars – many in their late 30s and 40s – won’t look to the league’s By Laws and Constitution if the powers that be shave the winning score to 50. Certainly, the film editors for FS-1 who pulled an all-nighter to prep for the Monday Night debut, will not complain at all.
The horrid shooting in the half-court setting was indicative of the more physical nature of half-court 3×3 ball, complete with somewhat relaxed rules in terms of defensive holding and hand-checking. Iverson’s 3’s Company team, 61-51 winners, shot an anemic 24-71 (.338) from 2-point range and 7-22 (.318) from 3-point range. Their opponents, the Ball Hogs, shot 18-58 (.310) and 9-26 (.346) while neither team hit a 4-point shot in the five attempts tossed up. Iverson;s club out-rebounded the Ball Hogs, 49-42, a stat to be watched for anyone seeking insight into future Big 3 events, especially as it relates to a supposed Fantasy League pitched on the Big 3 online site, but gone silent to a Digital Sports Desk reporter who sought entry.
Allen Iverson of 3’s Company reacts in the game against the Ball Hogs during week one of the BIG3 three on three basketball league at Barclays Center on June 25, 2017 in New York City. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
###
Injuries are the proverbial “elephant in the room” for the Big 3.
Two of its stars – Jason “White Chocolate” Williams and Corey Maggette suffered injuries which cause them limp off the court, never to be seen nor reported on again. Both suffered apparent leg, knee or Achilles injuries and were scheduled to have MRIs on Monday, according to Mason. Kenyon Martin was sidelined with “a tweaked hamstring” but is planning to participate in next week’s Big 3 event in Charlotte.
“We don’t know yet,” said Mason after his Hashtag Sports presentation. “they’re going for an MRI today.”
“Just like any sport or any league, we’re going to have injuries, he said, noting the 3×3 format should cut down on basketball-related injuries as compared to a 5×5 game, a fact certainly not valid for emergency room physicians who treat aging weekend warriors who’ve blown out many a knee, pulled a hamstring or torn an Achilles Heel or two in 3×3 half-court games across America.
“In our business model, each team has an injured reserve player and we have about 20 players that went undrafted. We have some guys, like Steve Francis, some big names that are waiting in the wings.”
3 Headed Monsters player Jason Williams (55) is helped off the court after an injury during a BIG3 Basketball League game on June 25, 2017 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY (John Jones/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
###
Mason took an NFL-like approach to the fact injuries are, indeed, part of the game. However, the lack of information provided by The Big 3 at the event or to media attempting to gather accurate information and inform basketball fans of the fate of their old-time stars, placed the league in a minor league, barnstorming, traveling snake-oil salesman, mode of operation, rather than a buttoned down operation where injury reports, team doctor statements and expected down time are the very basics of a professional operation.
Instead, The Big 3 will march on.
Iverson quickly indicated to fans and media in Brooklyn not to expect to see too much of his 42-year old bones in the events of the future, yet he plans to stay on as a coach and captain of the 3’s Company.
Only “Father Time” will tell if too many Achilles Heal injuries become the very Achilles Heel for the league. Team doctors and rebounding seem to be the most sought after commodity for The Big 3 after week one.
Sadly, we all know, “Father Time” is … Undefeated.
