Dallas II

Back at it in Dallas. After a successful stint with a pickup basketball site in New York City, I decided to give Dallas another shot as they have had about 7 months to develop their pickup logistics. For those of you who may have missed it, I had a rather disappointing Dallas visit the last time I went, with two different pickup basketball sites providing zero pickup basketball experience.

But hopefully this time goes better right?

First up, I decided to give HoopClub.org the first chance. They rent out gyms around the Dallas area and charge $10 per person (capped at 15) per 2-hour session.

I went straight to their site and immediately booked the only day I could play, which was a Monday. I noticed that for the entire week, I was the only one who booked anything. I held out a little hope because their Facebook page remained very active showing people playing every week, but the numbers just don’t seem to match up.

As expected, Monday evening came and went, and around 2 hours before the scheduled start time of basketball, I received a cancellation email saying not enough people signed up. The one positive note is that the guy who runs the site is very responsive and answered every question I had regarding whether or not we would play. He even offered me a free pass the next time I’d come.

With my evening open, I decided on to option #2, which was PickUp USA Fitness. They market it as “10 Minute Pickup Games WITH REFEREES running daily”. They offer a free pass to try the gym out, and I used mine last time. But since I came within a week of opening, and there was no one playing pickup basketball, they kept calling and emailing me about coming back to try it out for free again.

I went and checked in again, and the moment I walked in, I knew it wasn’t looking good. There were about 10 people total, but that included parents and 10 year olds shooting around. I figured since it was only 7 pm, I’d have 3 hours for people to start trickling in, so I decided to wait it out to see if anybody would come.

As time slowly went by, a few people here and there came in. Most people were 20 or under. The situation didn’t get any better, but I do want to give a shout out to the employees there as they actively tried getting people to play. Finally, after about an hour and a half of just shooting around by myself, the employees rounded enough people to play 5’s.

BUT it was not what you would have expected. The next 10 minutes of basketball were probably the worst 10 minutes of basketball anybody could have experienced. 4 of the players were referees, so we did not have refs. Nothing against young kids trying to play, but it’s always odd when you have people who are probably 20-30 years old and over 6 ft tall with 13 year old kids who are hovering 4 ft tall. I knew this was going to be a bad game from the get go, but I needed my ‘experience’, so I decided to give it a go.

Highlights of the game

• 1 player twisted his ankle within 1 minute of the game. Since we didn’t have another player to replace him, they made a rule where him and another player had to stand on the offensive side of the court at all times.

• 1 player carried a tennis ball in one hand while playing

• 2nd player twisted their ankle

At this point, I figured it would be a great time to just stop playing.

First, I do want to give a shout out to the employees and referees there who actually wanted to get people to play pickup basketball. That was much appreciated. Second, I thought about their business model a bit more, and I don’t think the ‘Pickup basketball’ aspect is going to be their main selling point. I think for them to be successful, they’ll make most of their $$ from basketball training and coaching for younger kids. The age group will be roughly 8-18 year old’s. I really cannot imagine anybody over 20 signing up for this gym, but I hope they prove me wrong.

Conclusion

Dallas yet again failed me. I still have high hopes for both but I have changed my perception on which program will be most successful. Last time I mentioned that I thought PickUp USA Fitness would prove to be more successful, but after my successful stint in NYC, I now think HoopClub has the upper edge on being successful in actually getting a pickup game going. Most people over 30 (my own assumption without any data) play basketball only about once every week or less, so they’ll most likely want to pay only when they play. That’s why I favor the HoopClub model over the other for now. But ultimately, there needs to be a large amount of basketballers to reach that success, and Dallas is not at that point yet. I’m sure I’ll be back sometime in the future, and when I am, I’ll be trying both of these again!