When team Captain James “Flight” White missed Game 3 of the 2023 season, Coach Stephen Jackson found his replacement somewhere you wouldn’t expect: social media. Instead of giving White’s roster spot to a player who made his name in the NBA or FIBA, he went with Ryan “Hezi God” Carter, who was best known for his social media presence. (As of this writing, Carter has 379,000 followers on Instagram alone.)
Carter’s first game was nothing to write home about – he scored seven points and made a three, but often struggled defensively against Power’s size, and Trilogy lost 50-40 to Nancy Leiberman’s squad. For some coaches, the experiment would have ended there. But Jackson saw something in Carter, and what happened next will forever be a part of BIG3 history.
Over the next few games, Carter absolutely went off. Starting in the place of Isaiah Briscoe, a preseason MVP favorite, Carter dropped a game-high 27 points in a dominant win over the 3-Headed Monsters. (Briscoe would go on to miss the rest of the season, which would have absolutely crippled Trilogy if it weren’t for Carter’s brilliance.) The next game, Carter dropped a game-high 20 points in a win over Tri State, and took home his second consecutive Player of the Week Award.
Then things got really crazy. In Week 6, Carter set a BIG3 single-game scoring record when he dropped 35 points in a win against 3’s Company, giving him his third straight Player of the Week award and putting his name into the BIG3 history books. For a time, the BIG3 was Hezi God’s league.
What separated Hezi God from other “influencer” players was his ability to shoot the ball. Since jump shots aren’t as highlight-friendly as dunks or ankle-breakers, it’s fairly common for players who make their living on making highlights to not have much of a jump shot. During his scoring surge, Hezi God proved that he’s an elite shooter at the professional level, which is crucial to being effective when you have an elite handle. Being the “President of Snatchback University” doesn’t mean much if the jumper you take after snatching it back isn’t something defenders have to fear. Hezi God has the goods from outside. When you combine that with his handle, muscular frame, and fearlessness inside, you’ve got a deadly scorer who can get the best of high-level pros on a weekly basis.
Hezi God didn’t match the heights of his surge over the rest of the season, but BIG3 made a playoff run behind the contributions of Carter and Earl Clark. It was perhaps a disappointing result for the defending back-to-back champs, but considering Briscoe missed nearly the entire season it’s clear they only made the playoffs at all because of Carter coming out of nowhere to put the league on notice.
Hezi God’s sensational rookie season was great for the league, and we’ll see if he can follow it up with a Championship run next season. Meanwhile, the gauntlet has been thrown down to every other basketball influencer – if you want to say you can play this game at a high level, come prove it against elite pros like Hezi God did.