Caitlin Clark and Ice Cube. The collaboration you didn’t know you wanted.
It could happen, but not in the recording studio.
Ice Cube and his BIG3 basketball league have offered Iowa’s Clark a landmark contract to play in their 3-on-3 league. The deal is for $5 million for 10 total games, according to TMZ, and Clark would see even more money from endorsements and merchandising. $5 million is quite a bit more than Clark would make in the WNBA, where yearly player salaries don’t typically rise above $300K.
We intended the offer to remain private while Caitlin Clark plays for the championship. But I won’t deny what’s now already out there: BIG3 made a historic
offer to Caitlin Clark. Why wouldn’t we? Caitlin is a generational athlete who can achieve tremendous success in the BIG3. https://t.co/cwzHh7EVau— Ice Cube (@icecube) March 27, 2024
The skeptics laughed when we made Nancy Lieberman the first female coach of a men’s pro team, and she won the championship in her first year. Then Lisa Leslie won it all in year two. With our offer, Caitlin Clark can make history and break down even more barriers for women…
— Ice Cube (@icecube) March 27, 2024
If Clark took this contract and became the highest-paid women’s basketball player ever, Ice Cube said that she would still be able to play in the WNBA. He sees the BIG3 as an alternative to the practice of WNBA players going overseas to play during the offseason.
“America’s women athletes should not be forced to spend their off seasons playing in often dismal and dubious foreign countries just to make ends meet,” Ice Cube posted on X. “And they should have more than just one professional option in the US at a time when American pro sports leagues are being infiltrated by autocratic, anti-women regimes such as Qatar. Our pathbreaking offer to Caitlin Clark demonstrates that BIG3 now offers another choice for athletes.”
Ice Cube didn’t mention any specific incident, but there’s no question he’s talking about Brittney Griner‘s notorious imprisonment in Russia, where she played for several seasons. Griner was arrested in a Russian airport in February 2022 after several marijuana cartridges were found in her luggage. She insisted she did not mean to bring them into the country, but Russian officials still threw the book at her, sentencing her to nine years in prison. Griner was brought home in December 2022 as part of a prisoner exchange after a 10-month ordeal.
With the Iowa Hawkeyes preparing to face the Colorado Buffaloes in the Sweet 16 on Saturday, we’re not likely to get an answer from Clark anytime soon. And it’s hard to predict what she might do. She is all but certain to be drafted No. 1 by the Indiana Fever in mid-April, and may want to go all-in on training and getting used to her new life. But she has also never shied away from the spotlight or from being a trailblazer. It’s entirely possible that we could see her in a BIG3 uniform in the not-so-distant future.
