If you were a causal viewer of this summer's second season of the BIG3, the professional 3-on-3 basketball league co-founded by Ice Cube, you probably saw the highlights of Metta World Peace kicking a basketball, the shoving match during the championship game or Glen "Big Baby" Davis dancing his heart out after a big basket.

What you probably didn't see is the hard work that Ice Cube, co-CEO Jeff Kwatinetz, chairman of the board Amy Trask, commissioner Clyde Drexler and countless others put in to get the league through a successful second season. Women's basketball legend Nancy Lieberman led Power to the title in her first season as a BIG3 head coach, and she had nothing but praise for the executive team's efforts to get the league off the ground.

"I don't know how many people can say that they started a league," Liberman told CBS Sports. "What Ice Cube, Jeff, Amy, Clyde the initial coaches last year -- to be able to say they were on the cutting edge of actually starting a league from scratch is no easy task."

Liberman was especially effusive when it came to Ice Cube, to the point where she had to apologize for embarrassing him -- the same man who rapped on a record called, "F*** Tha Police" with N.W.A in 1988. She even joked that Kobe Bryant should use one of his "Detail" segments to break down Ice Cube's ability to juggle so many responsibilities.

"This man, Ice Cube, does not sleep," Lieberman continued. "I knew him as a fan in all the things he does. But until you work with him and you see the texts and you see his involvement. He could be doing a concert in Australia, and, boom, he's talking, he's communicating, he's getting on coaches' calls. ... But my goodness, what a leader. He's an influencer -- he's not just an owner."

As for Ice Cube, he puts the BIG3 ahead of all of his other accomplishments in a varied and hugely successful career as a rapper, actor and entrepreneur.

"Man, this is the coolest thing I've ever done," Ice Cube told CBS Sports. "Because this here, it affects so many people that I respect. And it makes people feel good, it makes people happy -- the viewers, the players, the players' families, the coaches, the staff. You know, everybody is happy when a BIG3 game is on. ... But to me this is the coolest thing because, you know, it's live like a concert, but it's not about me, you know what I mean? I'm setting the stage for people that I respect and love their talent to do their thing. So I get a lot of joy out of this. It's not working hard to me, it's just having fun. And that's what we're doing, we're having fun."

Speaking of having fun, the BIG3 leaders all noted that the most memorable part of running a league like this is seeing the players interact with each other. Many of the players have preexisting relationships from their days in the NBA or in college, and the champion Power were fortunate enough to have league MVP Corey Maggette, Cuttino Mobley, Quentin Richardson and Davis, all of whom played for the Clippers. Lieberman said that Maggette and Richardson have been friends since fifth grade, as they both grew up in the Chicago area.

Unlike most professional sports, all the players are in the same city on every game night. That means they spend a lot of time together off the court, which leads to increases in both camaraderie and ruthless trash talk. Most arenas only have two locker rooms, so occasionally a team that hasn't played yet has to share the space with a team that just lost.

"I think that's what they love about it, about the BIG3, is the fact that they get to hang with each other and the camaraderie is very high amongst the league," Ice Cube said. "But it's a double-edged sword, too. Because now if you lose to a guy, you can't get away from him. He's on you and he's not giving you a break. ... So you wanna get that victory. You don't wanna go, hearing a guy mouth off for seven weeks straight because he beat you."

Both Lieberman and Drexler, who coached last year during the BIG3's inaugural season before becoming commissioner this season, agreed that the competition on and off the court is what makes the players, most of whom are in their 30s (Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, an MVP contender this season, is 49 years old), want to extend their careers.

"You've got to have thick skin, but you've been around these guys most of your lives and that's a part of it," Drexler said. "That's who we are. That's in our DNA. That's what makes us who we are -- we're competitive. And that shows on the floor. And part of the BIG3 is they get to re-live that competitive fire, and it's a golden opportunity."

The BIG3 also broke ground this season in its hiring practices, with Lieberman becoming the first woman to serve as a head coach in a men's professional sports league. But the press release at the beginning of the season highlighting the historic accomplishment was pretty much the only time you heard about Lieberman's gender.

In fact, Trask's most memorable moment of this season was watching Maggette, after winning the BIG3 title, respond to someone in the hallway who asked him what it was like to play for a woman. Trask watched with an "ear-to-ear smile" as Maggette sternly told the person how nobody in the league viewed Lieberman as a "woman head coach," but simply as their head coach.

"That was a special moment, because he wasn't doing it for the microphones. He wasn't doing it for the cameras," Trask told CBS Sports. "And it was so clearly heartfelt and sincere that he took his time away from celebrating this win to explain to this person, who asked him a pointed question about playing for a woman, that no one with the BIG3 was at all focused on her gender -- that other people who were focused on her gender needed to stop focusing on her gender. And it was a very, very special moment for any number of reasons."

As for season three next summer, there won't be any major rule changes or dramatic shifts -- the executives think they've found a winning formula -- but the team hinted that we might get our first look at a BIG3 game that takes place overseas. They had their first international game in Toronto this season, but are being "courted" by several countries to take their show outside North America.

"Everything improved," Drexler said of season two. "And that's what you've got to do to continue to grow the BIG3. In season three, we're gonna try to do everything in our power to get even better, and that's how you continue to be the best that you can be. But only through hard work and diligence do you get there."