Last summer, rapper and Big3 founder Ice Cube said that his upstart basketball league offered Caitlin Clark $10 million to play for two years.
Last week, longtime Big3 announcer David “Tattoo” Gonzalez said it was $15 million.
“It started at five [million], but the official final offer was 15 for 10 weeks,” Gonzalez said on the TFU Podcast.
“She must be making such good dough. … I’m sure we helped her make more money. All you need is a name like Ice Cube publicly offering that kind of money for the rest to come together,” Gonzalez said.
Sports website The Spun quickly wrote a story on Gonzalez’s claim with the headline “Caitlin Clark Turned Down ‘Massive’ $15 Million Offer.” Big3 president Jeff Kwatinez reposted a tweet of the story and said, “This article is untrue. The writer never checked with BIG3.”
The article, tweet, and other tweets of the article have all since been deleted; so has the entire Aug. 26 podcast episode. This includes the full episode on YouTube and shorter clips from the episode posted by TFU across social media, even clips that did not include anything about Caitlin Clark. A viral tweet from sports media outlet BallisLife was also deleted.
TFU podcast co-host Alejandro Gonzalez confirmed to Front Office Sports via email that the episode has been deleted “in its entirety.” He also said David Gonzalez’s claim about the $15 million offer was “inaccurate.”
Gonzalez would not say why the whole show was deleted, but said the podcast team has “not spoken to Caitlin Clark or her team.”
Clark’s representatives declined to comment. Big3 representatives referred FOS to the tweet from Kwatinez.
The Big3 is a 3-on-3 summer professional basketball league that launched in 2017 whose top players are former NBA players like Michael Beasley and Dwight Howard. A woman has never played in the league, though Hall of Famers Lisa Leslie and Nancy Lieberman have served as head coaches.
Ice Cube’s original claim of the $10 million offer to Clark generated headlines since Clark was paid less than $80,000 in her first year in the WNBA. Clark had driven record viewership to the NCAA Women’s March Madness tournament in consecutive years—and has proven that she could carry fans over to the WNBA.
The offer also came months before the debut of Unrivaled, a 3-on-3 women’s basketball league that has paid players an average of $220,000 per year. Clark did not play in the inaugural season of Unrivaled despite FOS reporting that the league prepared an offer north of $1 million for the star guard.
