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BIG3 championship preview: Could the year end in an upset?
Can BIG3 MVP Rashard Lewis lead the 3-Headed Monsters to an upset victory against the undefeated Trilogy in the title game? Christian Petersen/Getty Images

BIG3 championship preview: Could the year end in an upset?

The 3-Headed Monsters were my sleeper pick to make a deep run heading into the season. I thought Rashard Lewis had the kind of game that would work well for the construction of the league and that Kwame Brown’s size would provide a plethora of problems for the opposition.

I thought Trilogy would win a few games off the strength of Kenyon Martin's and Al Harrington’s physicality but wasn’t sold on Rashad McCants and this team’s ability to overcome the physicality of the Killer 3s.

There was so much we — I — didn’t know heading into the inaugural season of the BIG3. Watching through 10 cities in 10 weeks, you learn a lot about an old game in a new format, old players in new uniforms, old conventions replaced with new ideals. McCants has been marvelous all season, Brown would be remembered entirely differently if his career began with this league and, well, nothing really changed about Martin — whose season was largely derailed by injury much like his NBA career.

The season has boiled down to the undefeated Trilogy facing off against league MVP Lewis and his 3-Headed Monsters. The two teams played once, early in the season, with Trilogy winning 50-37. Things got away from the 3-Headed Monsters early, heading into overtime down 25-9 and never recovering from that. In the second half, 3HM had a 28-25 edge, but chopping three points off their halftime deficit just made the blowout feel less terrible.

If 3HM can find a silver lining in their loss to Trilogy, it’s that Trilogy didn’t really outplay them in the way the final score suggests. Both teams shot relatively the same (14-for-32 for 3HM, 15-for-35 for Trilogy). Assists were equal, 3HM was +1 in rebounding while recording fewer personal fouls and fewer turnovers. With only one more made field goal and more turnovers, how was Trilogy able to win by such a large margin?

Trilogy was +12 from deep and +8 from the free throw line. The team did a great job creating matchups, getting in the paint and either drawing shooting fouls or kicking out to wide-open three-point shooters. Four members from Trilogy hit at least one three-pointer, and Dion Glover came off the bench and hit two himself. If you remove McCants’s 1-for-6 line, Trilogy shot .500 from deep against 3-Headed Monsters.


Can Rashad McCants get back on track for the undefeated Trilogy in the BIG3 Championship Game vs. the 3-Headed Monsters? Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

It’s going to be hard to imagine the title game playing out this way. Trilogy lost Kenyon Martin on the day, changing the way the team approached the game offensively, which worked out great. 3HM lost Jason Williams in the game before and hadn’t quite figured out how they were going to play without their best ball handler and captain. Since then, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf has been fantastic for 3HM, and Rashard Lewis turned into the league’s best scorer.

McCants is coming off two poor shooting games and was an abysmal 3-for-11 in the matchup against 3HM. However, in every game that McCants has struggled — and there haven’t been many — Harrington has picked him up. In the game against 3HM, Harrington had an incredibly efficient 20 points on nine shots with seven rebounds and an assist.

In Vegas, we can expect Abdul-Rauf to get way more than the nine minutes he received in the first matchup, and Lewis should be much more active scoring the ball in the first half than he was in the first meeting against Trilogy. For the league’s undefeated squad, expect a better shooting night from McCants, but coming off a couple of off nights, we still might not see the guy who was setting the league on fire during the regular season.

This is a tough one to call, especially knowing that Trilogy has had to come back in consecutive games. If the top seed gets down against 3HM, Lewis’s ability to score the ball could be enough to hold the favorites off. On the flip side, Trilogy is 9-0 for a reason. The team has overcome plenty and work even better as a front-runner. 3HM are a completely different team than they were in Week 2, and Trilogy is better as the team has had two months to gel and get the most out of each other. We couldn’t ask for a better title game, but it’s almost impossible to predict.

Prediction: When in doubt, become irrational. 3-Headed Monsters win a thriller, 50-47, ending Trilogy’s bid for an undefeated season.

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