The BIG3 will wrap up its second season on Friday evening in Brooklyn. The 3-on-3 league’s sophomore year will feature names like Baron Davis, Drew Gooden, Corey Maggette, Glen “Big Baby” Davis, and a handful of others competing with a championship on the line at the Barclays Center.
The finals and consolation game are both a few days away, though, and the league decided to try and increase the anticipation for those by announcing its year-end awards on Tuesday afternoon. There are plenty of conventional awards — MVP, Coach of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, etc. — along with some league-specific ones like Trash Talker of the Year.
Here’s the full list of winners, along with the runners-up for each award in parentheses.
MVP: Corey Maggette (David Hawkins)
Coach: Nancy Liebermann (Gary Payton)
Captain: Corey Maggette (DerMarr Johnson)
Defensive Player of the Year: Chris Andersen (Reggie Evans)
Too Hard to Guard: Al Harrington (Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and Andre Emmett)
Trash Talker: Gary Payton (Nate Robinson and Stephen Jackson)
4th Man: Andre Emmett (Qyntel Woods)
BIG Community Award: Ricky Davis (Jerome Williams)
A number of these names will be involved in the championship game on Friday night — most notably, Maggette and Andersen play for Power, which is coached by Lieberman. They’ll all go up against 3s Company, which is led by Johnson and also features Davis and Gooden.
However, my eyes will be on the third place game, as Payton’s 3 Headed Monsters squad will take on Robinson and Tri-State. This is very important because it includes the Trash Talker of the Year and a runner up for the award, which theoretically means we are going to watch Gary Payton and Nate Robinson try to chew one another out during the consolation game, which rules.
Also: It is important to stress that Payton won Trash Talker of the Year despite being a coach and not a player. Payton might be the best trash talker in NBA history — Damon Stoudamire once wrote that he was afraid to jaw with him because he thought Payton’s trash talk could lead to him getting sent to therapy — and it’s good to see that he’s still untouchable.
