Turnover

3BA might be the next big thing in professional basketball: full-court, three-on-three hoops played at breakneck speed. But even the game’s back-and-forth action can’t compete with the off-the-court legal drama.

By Matthew Halverson

LuBahn continued to insist to investors and even in court proceedings that he was 3BA’s creator, that he owned the trademarks and copyrights to the name and the idea, but he was either lying to himself or everyone else: When Larry Claunch agreed to invest in 3BA in summer 2007, he looked into LuBahn’s financial history and found that not only had Kevin and Laura filed for bankruptcy earlier that year, but they hadn’t claimed the trademarks and copyrights in the filings. Claunch had insisted that LuBahn reopen the case to straighten out the potentially actionable oversight and bring the new organization aboveboard. Then in September 2008, just weeks after 3BA International’s last exhibition game in Seattle, Claunch finalized the purchase of the 3BA intellectual property. LuBahn sold him what amounted to the last 10 years of his life for just $5,000.

3BA International announced revised plans in July to finally launch its first season in 2011, and left the door open to more exhibition games this fall. (Merritt wouldn’t confirm it, but court documents suggest that Shawn Kemp was considering purchasing a franchise.) Yet after more than a decade of tirelessly insisting that professional three-on-three basketball could work, after spending years as its only cheerleader, Kevin LuBahn would have no part in those plans.

As far as Claunch was concerned, it was LuBahn’s own fault. “The people that know me are blown away by how far I went to try to get Kevin to calm down and enjoy this,” Claunch said in mid-July. “To this day, I have no idea why he did what he did.”


Sports commentators have a term for implausible comebacks orchestrated by underdog teams that have no business competing with the big boys: a Cinderella story. And inexplicably, it may apply to LuBahn’s 3BA saga. The first time he and I spoke, he seemed both devastated at having lost his grip on 3BA and strangely at ease. “There comes a point when you have to be able to let go and say it’s okay,” he said. “And you have to be able to believe that the finalization of the creation is more valuable than any petty game that you could have. There are other things I can do. I’m a talented guy.”

In subsequent conversations, though, he grew stubborn, insisting that the game had been stolen from him. Then in our second-to-last interview, he began using the pronoun we when referring to 3BA. He said repeatedly that he still loved Beamer Ford. And when I asked him to explain the change of heart, he said he was confident that he would be able to work things out with the organization and actually return to the fold, although he didn’t explain—or seem to know—how.

His rosy hopes for a happy ending were, to say the least, baffling. He was being sued by his former employers for trying to sabotage their business, and he had accused a coworker of making veiled death threats against him. When I called Merritt to ask him what he made of LuBahn’s dream of rejoining the organization, he declined comment, but just days earlier, Claunch had shown no indication that LuBahn had any future with 3BA. “I liked Kevin. I wanted him to be successful,” he said. “But Kevin was his own worst enemy.”

Maybe not. Just before this article went to press, a Seattle Met fact-checker called Claunch to double-check the details of 3BA’s inner turmoil, and Claunch confirmed all but one: LuBahn was no longer definitively out. I called him for an explanation, and although he was hesitant to talk, he did say that just in the past few days he’d begun to consider dropping the suit and inviting LuBahn back. “I don’t like battles,” he said. “I just think he was a little misguided for a while there.”

The next day, Beamer Ford called to clarify what Claunch had said. LuBahn wouldn’t have a position with 3BA, but she’d brought him and Claunch together to discuss a settlement that would involve giving LuBahn an ownership stake in 3BA International. She denied that it was an attempt to prevent LuBahn from revealing the improprieties that he claimed to have seen while with the organization and then asked that I not make the settlement public. She and Claunch had yet to tell Merritt or Barr about it.

LuBahn, on the other hand, stopped answering his phone. Evidently he’d learned to quit while he was ahead.