In Ice Cube’s BIG3, the champion defends, but doesn’t reload

NEW YORK — Winner stays. There’s a scouting report now, so it’s going to be a lot more difficult this year than it was last year.” All the players in the league — other than those on Trilogy — who weren’t captains or co-captains went back into this year’s draft pool, with no promise of getting picked with the added talent that was available this year: Amare Stoudemire, Ron Artest, Carlos Boozer, Baron Davis and Nate Robinson signed on. “We felt like fans are weary of, you get behind a team, they win it, and you don’t know if that same team is going to come back or not,” Cube said. “So there’s got to be something, so in our league we just eliminate that.” Cube envisions a 12-team league playing twice a week in NBA arenas next season if the BIG3, trying to capitalize on the popularity of 3-on-3, which debuts in the Olympics in 2020 — is successful. “And the rest of the league has a measuring stick to draft because everybody goes back to the draft pool pretty much if you don’t win the championship, so you have to reorganize your thinking of your team to figure out how to beat this standard.