Ice Cube recently announced the expansion of his BIG3 basketball league, to Houston and Miami.
Earlier this year, Cube expressed his vision to transition the BIG3 from hosting games on the road to establishing home teams across the nation, with Los Angeles being his first acquisition. Looks like he’s making progress.
Get this, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday (July 3), that Eric Mullins and Milton Carroll purchased a franchise in Houston, and last month, businessman Heath Freeman acquired a unit in Miami. Freeman stated, “I am honored to join Ice Cube and [co-founder] Jeff Kwatinetz at the BIG3 and bring a new professional basketball team to Miami.”
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He added, “BIG3 is shaping the future of basketball; the gameplay is dynamic and nuanced, and the product on the court appeals to the audiences in this incredibly fast-growing region. Basketball fans across South Florida can rest assured that this franchise will soon add to our great region’s winning sports pedigree.”
Here’s what Cube said in an exclusive interview with VIBE prior to the announced expansion:
“We’d love to be in Toronto, New York, Miami, Chicago, the Bay Area, DC area, Baltimore, DMV, St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit,” he said. “We’d love to be in Jersey. We actually got a game in Newark this year.”
ICYMI, Cube also mentioned his attempts to recruit newly-drafted Indiana Fever player Caitlin Clark ahead of the 2024 WNBA season. Genius PR move. Here’s what he said:
”Her impact on the ratings is something that’s undeniable. She was doing better ratings than the NBA,” he said of the talented athlete. “As a league, you want that kind of star power. It would raise the bar for everybody. If another player comes along with that kind of impact, of course, we would go after them.”
Cube added, “It’s something that our sponsors and everybody was looking at, and if we would’ve landed her, it would have meant the league would’ve been able to collect more dollars from all our partners and sponsors. It would’ve been a big win for the whole league.”