Three Takeaways From Week 4

First, the good news – Bivouac, who have been competing hard all season, finally saw their hard work pay off with a win against the Triplets and got their first win since August of 2019. Now, onto the observations:

1 – Trilogy Trouble?

I’m beginning to worry if Trilogy has enough shot-making to defend their title. With Jarrett Jack no longer in the BIG3 and new Captain James “Flight” White mired in a shooting slump, this team is not much of a threat from the perimeter. Earl Clark has a sweet stroke for a big man, and actually leads the BIG3 in 3-point percentage through Week 4, but that hasn’t been enough.

They certainly don’t lack physicality. Amir Johnson has been an automatic bucket when he gets the ball around the rim (he’s currently shooting 78.9% from the field), and Isaiah Briscoe came into Week 4 leading the BIG3 in points in the paint and points in the restricted area.

The issue is that neither player is comfortable outside the paint. Amir Johnson is a true big who hasn’t attempted a three all season. Briscoe might be the pound-for-pound strongest player in the league, and he’s shown some immaculate ballhandling, but his shot is an issue. He’s shooting just 17.6% from deep this season, and he went 2-9 from the free throw line against the Aliens. For a player who relies on bullying his way to the rim as much as Briscoe does, leaving 14 points on the line isn’t what you want. If Trilogy wants to have a chance at repeating as Champions, they need to find some spacing, and soon.

2 – Size is an Advantage

I love watching Chris Johnson. He’s just so darn talented. Against the Killer 3’s, he hit a Dirk-style fadeaway from midrange, smoked Donte Greene with a left-to-right crossover and finished with a reverse layup, threw down an alley-oop, and somehow, from a standing position, took off on one side of the rim and reverse slammed it on the other. I don’t even understand the physics behind that. He also splashed in a four-pointer for good measure.

However, he missed all seven of the three-point shots he took. He certainly has range, as demonstrated by the four-pointer he made, but he might want to consider making the game a bit easier on himself and making more of an effort to go inside when his shot isn’t falling. He has a bit of what I call “Ian Malcom Syndrome” – Johnson can make any shot on the court, but sometimes he lets the fact he can make any shot stop him from thinking about whether he should be taking it. When Johnson figures out what the most efficient shots on the floor are for him and focuses on taking those shots, the Ghost Ballers might go to a whole other level.

3 – I Want More Fire!

The Bring the Fire rule is a fantastic part of FIREBALL3. It’s fun, and it adds a new dynamic to the game – we get to see more one-on-one battles and less free throws. It’s also a huge boost for the team whose player got whistled for the foul, especially because you can Bring the Fire on any foul call, no matter how obvious the foul was.

All that has me wondering why the BIG3 coaches, who include some of the best basketball minds we’ve ever seen, don’t take advantage of their Bring the Fire challenges more often. Each coach gets one challenge per half, so we should see four Bring the Fire challenges every game. In Week 4, not a single game had four Bring the Fire Challenges, and the Ball Hogs vs. Tri State game had none.

The coaches seem to be saving their challenges for crunch-time situations, but you can’t take your challenges with you, and a basket scored early in a half is just as valuable as one scored late in a half. Now, this isn’t exactly true given FIREBALL3’s punitive treatment of teams who put their opponents in the bonus – if a team in the bonus makes its free throw, they get the ball back – but even still there shouldn’t be a reason to have a half go by with a challenge in your pocket.

Instead of waiting for the game to be in the balance before Bringing the Fire, it might be wise for coaches to base when they use their challenges on matchups – if a player is a good free throw shooter but would have a tough time scoring one-on-one on the player that fouled him, that’s as good a time as any to pull the trigger, especially if the coach is looking to stop the other team’s momentum.

Anything is better than letting a challenge go to waste by not using it, especially since the 1-on-1 duels the Bring the Fire rule provides is one of the unique things that make FIREBALL3 so much fun to watch.