Ice Cube Claps Back at “Disrespectful” BIG3 Tweet From The Ringer

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We’ve got a new rap beef on our hands, folks. Well, not really. Ice Cube is involved, so it’s sort of a rap beef, but it has nothing to do with rap and the gentleman on the other side, Rodger Sherman, is a writer for The Ringer. 

When Rodger Sherman decided to write a story on the BIG3 for The Ringer, he probably thought he was doing the league a favor. After all, The Ringer is the gold standard for what’s cool in sports and pop culture among millennials (with Slackie Brown a close second, of course) and a featured article under their umbrella would certainly give the BIG3 some needed exposure.

But, as it turned out, the article (“Joe Johnson Is the Big3’s First God“) resulted in a firestorm –complete with a textbook Twitter pile-on — after a tweet to promote the post caught the eye of Ice Cube, the founder and face of the BIG3.

Cube was upset at the wording of the tweet — specifically the notion that most BIG3 players are “washed” — and quote-tweeted it with a message for Sherman (even though it was sent from The Ringer’s account). “I’d like to see you get your ass out there with them…”

Poor guy. All he wanted to do was write about Joe Johnson, not get into a war with Ice Cube and his 4.7 million followers. Was it a poor choice of words? Ehh, I’d say it’s 50/50; there are a lot of washed up, out-of-shape retirees playing in the BIG3, but some have gone from the BIG3 back to the NBA. The Ringer isn’t a malicious site, though, there wasn’t any real harm meant. That I’m sure of.

On the bright side, it would have been much worse if the tweet came from his personal account. Cube’s retweet has almost 20,000 likes so, yeah, that would have been a notification nightmare.

It should be noted that The Ringer’s tweet probably wasn’t typed out by Sherman or an intern or anyone with a pulse. The words are actually the subhead of the article; when a new post goes live, I imagine it automatically gets posted to Twitter along with the post’s subhead.

Cube was just sticking up for his league and its players, and those involved with the league were probably happy to see him doing so. At the same time, I’m surprised it got him so flustered. The only thing we can hope for now is that he’s really flustered, like flustered enough to drop “No Vaseline (Part 2)” aimed at Bill Simmons, The Ringer, and Rodger Sherman.