A former NBA personality and role player like Brian Scalabrine made his mark to help Ball Hogs win their first BIG3 game of the season this weekend.
The BIG3 has an awesome start to the final week of the regular season at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, TX. The first BIG3 game of the weekend in Dallas at the American Airlines Center included a former Chicago Bulls role player, forward Brian Scalabrine, with Ball Hogs taking on Bivouac.
Ball Hogs featured a former Dallas Mavericks wing DeShawn Stevenson, who won an NBA Championship back in 2011 alongside Dirk Nowitzki. And Stevenson wasn’t the only former Mavs player that won an NBA Championship that returned to the American Airlines Center with BIG3 over the weekend. Former skilled point guard Jason Terry was also back at AAC on Aug. 17.
However, Ball Hogs was facing an uphill battle on Aug. 17 as the only winless team in the BIG3 throughout seven regular season games. Bivouac had a hot player in former NBA point guard Will Bynum that was fighting for a spot among the four teams in the playoffs. But Ball Hogs did end up getting its first win of the season by the final score of 50-48 over Bivouac.
In the post-game press conference with Ball Hogs, head coach and former NBA legend Rick Barry described how Scalabrine wants to be a coach and his role in drawing up the final play. There isn’t much in the way of videos of Scalabrine with the clipboard after Stevenson hit the game-winning shot, but Scalabrine apparently looked like he was drawing up the scheme.
This question in the post-game press conference did come from the sight of Scalabrine holding the clipboard on the final timeout, but there is no clear evidence that the play was from his own mind. The play wasn’t designed on an inbound for the game-winning shot either.
Barry said that Scalabrine “actually wants to be a coach”, but that the play he drew up before Stevenson had that play to hit the game-winning shot was not of his own creation. Since there’s little insight into where the play came from, then it could be of Barry’s design.
The final play for Stevenson to hit the game-winning three-pointer from the corner came off a rebound from a shot beyond the arc that his teammate Xavier Silas missed on. Stevenson got the rebound and ran it out to the corner and hit the three-pointer from the corner to win the game.
Scalabrine spent a lot of the past two seasons with Ball Hogs on the bench. He is averaging less than three points and three rebounds per game this season. Apparently Barry and his teammates want him to shoot more and command the floor less. Scalabrine is a better shooter than he gets credit for, though.
The thought of Scalabrine as a basketball coach is very interesting. He is one of the most polarizing role players that competed with the Bulls, Boston Celtics, etc. in the past two decades. He’s apparently making moves to show he wants to coach now with the BIG3.