The BIG3 will postpone a quarantined, reality show-style, three-on-three tournament that the league had been hoping to launch in May, reports Mark Medina of USA Today. According to Medina, the BIG3’s 2020 regular season, which had been scheduled to tip off on June 20, will also be delayed.
A source tells Medina that the quarantined tournament will be pushed back to August or September, while the start of the regular season will be postponed until sometime in the fall or winter.
“It’s a fluid situation,” a person familiar with the situation told Medina. “It’s hard to provide a fixed date, but it’s happening.”
As we outlined in March, the BIG3 is aiming to hold a 16-player tournament in which all participants are quarantined together in a single Los Angeles-area home. The televised show would broadcast the three-on-three games in addition to capturing behind-the-scenes footage of the players living in the house — media production company Endemal, which has produced Big Brother, is expected to be involved.
The BIG3 had initially planned to launch the tournament in April or May, but is still working on finalizing the participants. Additionally, since the BIG3 is planning on conducting coronavirus tests on all the players and officials involved in the event, the league is sensitive to ongoing testing shortages elsewhere in the country. The league also wants to address safety concerns for players who would be traveling in from out of state.
BIG3 founder Ice Cube had hinted on Monday that the event would have to be delayed, suggesting that the timeline is somewhat out of the league’s hands.
“The BIG3 is ready to go but we can’t move faster than the government and the networks,” he tweeted. “We’re in a holding pattern until restrictions and schedules are worked out, ya dig?”