Ice Cube has been trying to make his Big3 Basketball League mainstream for a few years now. However, he has this feeling that the entire basketball world is against him. Case in point: The rapper-turned-actor-turned-league-founder ripped on the NBA regarding their lackadaisical coverage of the 3-on-3 league. He says that he's now "part of the club" and that his league is pissing the "gatekeepers" off.
"Mainstream media, they ain't f*cking with us," Ice Cube says in the four-minute video he posted on Twitter. "And that's cool, we can do it ourselves, you know what I'm saying?" He digs deep into how while the NBA isn't necessarily working with them, and he doesn't want them to, he wants the NBA to stop working against the Big3. "We still on the rise without these motherf*ckers," he claims. "If we don't need 'em, you don't need 'em."
Ice Cube Heated Over NBA Working Against Big3
— Ice Cube (@icecube) June 25, 2023
Ice Cube asks himself what he's going to do to deal with the gatekeepers and the NBA allegedly trying to keep the Big3 League quiet. He says he will go on a "F*ck The Gatekeepers" podcast tour. Ice wants to get his message out, letting people know straight from the source what he's seeing on the backend of the basketball business. "Some people may get pissed off because I'm going to talk to everybody," he says at the end of the video. "I'm not playing."
The goal of the Big3, according to Ice Cube, is to give the fans something during the doldrums of summer sports. The only major offering is baseball, with Wimbledon and a few golf tournaments sprinkled in. With the Big3, fans get a fun, competitive basketball product with familiar names. While Ice is working to silence the critics and push through the gatekeepers, there is plenty of support. Rapper 50 Cent is on record praising the Big3. He congratulated the former NWA rapper for "creating a path" for more sports leagues to crop up in what's mostly a monopolized industry.