One of the cooler aspects of the BIG3 is that all of the players and coaches seem to honestly care. Sure, everyone involved could just head out there and kind of take it easy, but if you watched the first week of play, all of the former players who are in the league are taking it really seriously. Odds are we won’t see fights or anything — [knocks on wood] — but there’s still some serious bragging rights on the line whenever teams take the floor.
Apparently, the league’s coaches feel this way, too. Take for instance Charles Oakley, the player-coach of the Killer 3s squad that includes Chauncey Billups, Larry Hughes, and Stephen Jackson. During their Week 2 matchup against the Clyde Drexler-coached Power squad, Jackson was apparently getting under Oakley’s skin with his poor play and attitude.
Jackson wasn’t moving the ball well, complained to the refs, and committed a dumb foul after a blown layup. All of this was too much for Oakley, who has never taken crap from anyone in his life and unloaded on Captain Jack.
Charles Oakley should coach the #Knicks pic.twitter.com/cHL196g99l
— Andrew Hammond (@ahammALDC) July 4, 2017
So Oakley is very obviously right to chew out Jackson, especially for that foul which looks like it only happened because he was embarrassed he got cooked by Corey Maggette.
BIG3 is serious business for everyone, which is really great, and seeing Charles Oakley as a coach getting increasingly frustrated with his players makes for some great TV. Hopefully during Killer 3s next practice — do the teams practice because that needs to be televised if so — Oakley and Jackson get into it because Oakley wants Jackson to run sprints and do burpees.
