There’s just no getting over it — the first thing you noticed when heading to your seats for Saturday night’s BIG3 basketball tripleheader at Vivint Smart Home Arena is that the court is a lot shorter than usual and there’s only one hoop. You know this going in, of course, considering the league is a halfcourt, 3-on-3 affair, but the visual is still jarring.
Those are just a few of the many components that distinguish the BIG3 from the NBA. There’s a ton of little gameplay things that take some getting used to — the guy taking the ball out of bounds being allowed to just dribble in; every trip to the free-throw line being an all-or-nothing single attempt; the allowance of hand-checking.