The Big 3 opens its ninth season Saturday at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, starting a four-game Week 1 slate with Joe Johnson still sidelined and Miami 305 back to defend the title it won in 2025.
That makes the opening day more than a ceremonial restart. The league’s half-court, 3-on-3 format returns with the kind of familiar names that have kept it relevant, and the first weekend now doubles as an early read on how the city-based teams have been remade for the 2026 campaign.
Miami 305 comes in as the defending champion and does so with its full 2025 roster intact. Mario Chalmers, Michael Beasley and Lance Stephenson remain its top trio, while Reggie Evans and Sean Williams are back for another run. The group already has a recent benchmark against the league’s opening-week field: it beat its Week 1 opponent 50-44 in last year’s opener, and Chalmers supplied the game-winning three-pointer against the Triplets in the title game.
The biggest absence belongs to Johnson, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in Week 2 of the prior season and has said he will continue to recover throughout the 2026 campaign. That leaves the Amps to move forward without one of the league’s best-known scorers, even after a 4-4 debut in 2025. Rick Mahorn will coach the Amps, with Nasir Core and Corey Brewer leading the group and Dakarai Tucker stepping in for Johnson alongside Charles Garcia and Donte Greene, the league’s fifth all-time leading scorer.
Trilogy also enters the new season with a reshaped look after finishing 2-6 in 2025 and posting a minus-11 point differential despite scoring the fourth-most points in the league. James Johnson, Jaylen Johnson and Jordan McCrae are expected to carry more of the load, with Willie Reed and Earl Clark also on the roster. Earl Clark’s track record matters here: he is a two-time BIG3 champion, and that kind of experience often becomes the difference in a short season.
The Riot, meanwhile, adds another layer of uncertainty to the opening slate. Dwight Howard and Jordan Crawford lead the team, Kosta Koufos joins the roster, and Billy Preston and Chris Allen fill out the rest. Koufos will miss the first two games because of a back strain, which means the Riot opens without a full front line. Their first-night edge may come from something less tidy: last year’s season-opening clash included a tussle between Howard and Lance Stephenson that ended with ejections, a reminder that the league’s familiar faces still carry old friction into new teams.
RotoWire will post quick-hit betting picks for all four clashes each week using DraftKings and FanDuel Sportsbook odds, adding a sharper commercial lens to the opener. The first Saturday in Los Angeles will not settle the season, but it will show whether Miami 305 can hold its place, whether the Amps can replace Johnson’s production, and whether the Riot can survive the first two games without Koufos. That is the kind of opening week that usually tells you more than a standings page ever will.
