Brussels

I don’t believe Brussels is a big basketball city as two out of the three outdoor basketball courts I went to had very few to zero players playing on it. Fortunately, the 3rd and final court I went to had players and I could play some half-court basketball. But honestly if you were to visit Brussels, I would recommend everyone to log onto Facebook and search ‘Brussels basketball’. You will see a dedicated group of ballers just for Brussels. Request an invite and they should accept you within a couple of hours. From there you can see lots of people interested in playing basketball. I think most posted times were on the weekends and on an indoor court where you have to pay, but it seems like lots of people are active on it, however, I did notice some posts asking about playing that went unanswered…

I thought about asking if anyone was playing but I wanted to see if I could play on a court without any social media help because I felt like Meetup groups are kind of cheating and 95% of the people playing basketball in a certain city probably don’t use social media to play basketball. They just call up their friends and go play.

Finding and getting to the court (8 – in the heart of Brussels. You can either walk there or there’s a subway station nearby)

I used the Facebook group to find basketball court locations. I picked out the 3 courts where people talked about the most and decided to check them out in the evening hours. I went on a Thursday night.

Square Marguerite

The first court I went to looked awesome as there were 2 courts and stands where it seemed like people could watch, but one court was overtaken by soccer (futbol?), and the other court had only 1 person shooting on it. I decided to continue to another court because it didn’t look like anything would develop here. It should be noted that there were lights here so people could play late into the night. I came here around 5:30pm and then again around 8:00 once it got dark.

Leopold Park

Court 2 was in the middle of a lovely park and there were 3 full length basketball courts here BUT, not a single soul playing. Maybe because it was almost at around 6:15ish sunset, and there were no lights here. The typical baller would know they couldn’t play here for long anyways, so no one comes here during the weekday.

Playground Saint Catherine

The 3rd court was in the middle of a busy intersection and there were lots of people playing basketball. One half of the court was used for a 4×4 game while the other half was people shooting around. There were a lot of people sitting around the benches watching, chilling, or just hanging around.

The Playground Saint Catherine court was extremely easy to get to as it was in the center or Brussels and it was only a 5 minute walk after I hopped off the Sainte Catherine subway.

The Basketball Court (7 – Lights are always important for outdoor courts. Lines are very well drawn.)

One nice thing about this court was that there are lights so people could play into the nighttime. I went around 8pm on a Thursday night and it was full of people either playing on the courts or hanging out nearby.

The court had very visible lines and it seemed like 1 full regulation sized court. The 3-point lines did not go directly out of bounds like the court I played on in Milan. I did notice that the free throw lane was a straight rectangle as opposed to the triangle lane typically found in international play.

The backboard was made from metal but was very different than the typical metal backboards. This backboard produced a softer bounce and had little holes through it to make them more aerodynamic? I noticed that court #2 also had these types of backboards. Rims were double rims, and there were remnants of chain nets but those were no longer there.

The Players (7 – people nice enough to invite me to play)

When I got there, there was a 4 on 4 game on one side of the court, and there were people just shooting around on the other half. Surprisingly, there were a couple kids throwing an American football back and forth on this court. The 4 on 4 game looked like it had 5 or more people waiting underneath the basket so I knew I wouldn’t get next automatically, so I went to the side with people shooting around in hopes that they would want to get next next. I asked and luckily they spoke some English but they told me that they had a group for next. So, I just decided to shoot around a bit waiting to think about my next move.

Typically, I am not the one to show off during warmups or shooting around or even during games because my game is rather fundamental and dull, but I had to make myself look good enough for people to pick me up, so I started doing some fancy moves and stuffs to hopefully catch an eye. I did seem to make a somewhat high percentage of my jump shots as well and held my follow through for lasting effects (I cringe just thinking about this now…). I did this for about 30 minutes before getting a bit tired and decided to stand near the 4 on 4 game in hopes to get next sometime.

The group where I was shooting around with at the beginning had just finished playing and dominated so they were going to play next again, but they had 1 person who was going to leave. And out of all the people who were waiting for next, they came up to me and asked if I wanted to play with them. I was pretty ecstatic as I thought I would be stuck in the ‘next’ cycle and immediately said yes. Who knew my plan of ‘looking good during shooting around’ actually worked…

The group of friends dominated everyone. They obviously played together many times and schooled everyone with competent passes, jump shots and just overall skill. I just moved around as a role player doing all the little things like setting back screens, hustling and not messing up. But then again, it’s all relative to the competition. The other teams were only ok, but it was ok enough for the 4 on 4 to be fun.

The Game (4 – very standard 4 on 4 half court)

I am biased here because I hate half court games. It doesn’t play to my strengths and it gets boring because you don’t have as much freedom pushing the ball up the court. But nonetheless, half court was all I got, so I took advantage of it.

Games were to 16 by 1’s and 2’s. the majority of people spoke French so they called out a lot of directions using French, so I had no idea what people were saying most of the times. But if you play basketball enough, you should have a good understanding of what to do, so I think I was alright.

It was a standard check rule for Europe where people can just shoot and dribble in right away from the top of the key. People did play very competitive and sometimes reckless. There were times where I was a bit afraid to go all the way through with a layup because the young guys want to block the crap out of the ball so they jump on top of people. I once landed awkwardly because this one person jumped on me from behind with no chance of blocking the ball.

Conclusion

It took me a while, but I finally found a court in Brussels with people playing pickup basketball. Playground Saint Catherine would be a great place to start but I would definitely recommend checking out the ‘Brussels basketball’ Facebook group as it seems to be the way to go for pickup basketball in Brussels…