When Unrivaled, the new women's 3-on-3 pro basketball league, tips off in Miami on Friday, the league is hoping to produce a game reminiscent of the fast-paced, pickup style that hoopers are used to playing on a street court.
"This game is rooted in how you would play basketball as a kid on a black top," Luke Cooper, Unrivaled president of basketball operations, told ESPN. "There's flow. There's pace. When you are watching, it feels like you are watching basketball ... it's not a gimmick."
Played on a condensed 49.2-foot by 72-foot court -- compared to the WNBA's 94-by-50 court and the Olympics' 36-by-49 halfcourt -- the rules for the new 3-on-3 league will be vastly different from the 3x3 Olympics event which made its debut in the Tokyo Games.
League officials told ESPN each Unrivaled game will feature three seven-minute quarters and a fourth quarter which the league is calling "winning score." The winning score will be determined by adding 11 points to the leading team's score through three quarters. For example, if the score is 50-48 heading into the final quarter, the first team to reach 61 points wins. There will never be overtime.
"We want this to be about basketball," Cooper said. "You're just playing to a score, which is honestly the purest form of basketball.
"When you played as a kid, no one played to 10 minutes when they were playing pickup. You throw a number out there and you played to it until someone hit a game winner."
Unrivaled organizers hope playing to a target score eliminates late-game fouls and speeds up the game overall. To that end, the free throw process also will be different. When a player is fouled -- whether on a layup or a 3-pointer -- only one free throw will be awarded. The single shot is worth two points for a foul on a 2-point field goal, or three points if the foul occurred on a 3-point attempt. An and-1 is worth one point.
Players will foul out after their sixth foul, but if the team only has three players available and one of them picks up her sixth foul, she will remain in the game but incur technical fouls for each additional foul she commits. Each technical foul will be one shot for one point.
Because of the smaller court and desire for a fast-paced game, the shot clock in Unrivaled will be set to 18 seconds, rather than the 24-second possessions in the WNBA. The clock will stop on made baskets only in the last 30 seconds of a period, not the last minute.
Unrivaled also recently announced it will hold a 1-on-1 tournament from Feb.10-14 that pits players against each other in a single-elimination, winner-take-all competition with a $250,000 reward for the winner and an additional $10,000 for her 3-on-3 teammates.