Los Angeles of Anaheim of Seal Beach

I have no idea which city to choose so I went with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim naming convention…

I had a hot minute in Anaheim, California and discovered this Meetup group called ‘5-on-5 Basketball & Networking’ at the AIM Sportsplex in Seal Beach. Advertised as ‘ALL skill levels welcome’ but the competition level was intermediate, so I would recommend at least an above average skill level. A bit pricey at $10 a person but I am unsure if everyone had to pay.

Finding and getting to the court (3 – outside both Anaheim and Los Angeles. Needed an Uber to get to the court)

I arrived in the AM Monday morning and then I had a flight out at 11pm. I wanted to check out Venice Beach but that was too far because I was attending a conference that ended around 5pm. I wish that I had more time to research some more courts but ended up doing the simple thing by going to the Meetup website and searched Los Angeles pickup basketball courts. LA seems to have a rich community for basketball as there were basketball dates seemingly every day including 2 options for Monday. I chose the meetup called ‘5-on-5 Basketball & Networking’ at the AIM Sportsplex in Seal Beach 7:30-9:30pm because Seal Beach seemed to be on the way to LAX airport from Anaheim so I could maximize my time playing.

Getting to the court a bit of a pain. I am a big public transportation user and for all my other courts I either walked or took some type of bus or subway, but this place seemed to be in between LA and Anaheim in the middle of nowhere. My only option was Uber to AIM Sportsplex.

The Basketball Court (8 – as expected, the sportsplex had the standard amenities of a basketball court)

AIM Sportsplex featured 3 full court basketball courts that seemed to be used as a multipurpose sporting venue. It seemed like anybody could rent for a fee. When we played, we used the first court. The middle court was being unused while the far court was used for volleyball.

Pretty standard indoor court as expected. I assumed the courts were used in many basketball leagues so the backboards, hoops, nets and court linings were on par.

The one thing that stood out about this pickup group was that they utilized the electronic scoreboard to keep time and score.

I gave it an 8 only because I think the courts were youth sized court instead of full size regulation or at least high school sized. I know, very picky but I can’t give it a perfect 10 unless its perfect.

The organizer did seem like he charged an arbitrary $ amount per person. I say this because when I asked him how much it cost to play as I was leaving, he didn’t have an answer right away, and then eventually said $10. Only about 5 people had paid at that point, and he didn’t seem interested in collecting $$ from anyone else. I’m not sure if he already had enough to pay the gym fee or not, but I wasn’t going to worry about it because I was happy to pay for this one time opportunity.

The Players (7 –everyone was intermediate level or higher)

The Meetup was called ‘5-on-5 Basketball & Networking’ but there was very little networking and very much basketball. I will applaud the organizer for trying to make this a networking event as before we started playing, he did have everyone go around and say their name and what they did as a career. After that first 5 min pow-wow, it was on to basketball. He was also fair in making teams as he picked the first 10 players who signed in and randomly placed them on a team.

The Meetup organizer was extremely responsive because when I saw only 5 people had RSVP’d I wanted to make sure that there would be more people showing up. He responded within minutes letting me know that most people don’t RSVP. He was right as about 20 people showed so don’t get discouraged if there’s only a few people who RSVP.

They advertised this Meetup pickup for ‘ALL skill levels welcome’ but I will say you better know how to play basketball. There was one person who I will call ‘F’ who had 0 basketball experience. F was one of the first 10 players so F played in the first game. It became obvious that F had never played basketball in their life because F stood near the half court line the whole time during the first game. It got so bad that when the team asked F to defend someone, F asked ‘please explain what defense is’. You could tell there was some upset players on F’s team because they had to play 4 on 5 the whole game. The team did try to be nice by passing F the ball one time, but it’s the situation where you know the person is so out of the league that everyone just pauses and watches as F travels and walks with the basketball.

Besides that player, everyone else was pretty solid. I would say maybe 3 players could dunk but there were no dunks during the games. There were a couple of athletic long players who could get up for strong layups, as well as some big men who could hold their positions. I didn’t see many successful post moves, but they were effective enough to keep trying. Most players were pretty strong and played solid D.

Average height was ~6ft with the shortest around 5’5 and the tallest at 6’4. Average age was ~35 with the oldest at ~45 and the youngest was maybe 18. I would say most were between 30 and 36 years old.

The Game (7 – Timed games which made things interesting but blowouts led to a 3 point shootout)

Games were 12 minutes running clock which I thought was a great idea because 1. I had never played like this before, and 2. Everyone was guaranteed at least a 12 minute game. But I’ll explain later on why it’s actually not as great as it seems.

No ‘win by’ rule so the winner after 12 minutes would get next. The clock never stopped. I never saw an OT game but they mentioned that there would be OT if it was tied but I am unsure if it was more time, or next team score wins. Games were with 2’s and 3’s.

The timed games were great when the games were close like the first game played. The first game (where it was 4v5), the team with 5 players was down 1 with 10 seconds left and took a shot and missed but after a mad scramble for the rebound, got their own offensive rebound and threw the ball to the corner teammate who caught the ball in midair and threw up a wild shot that somehow went in as the buzzer sounded. Probably the coolest moment of the day and it made the timed clock idea seem like a good idea.

But then the next 3 games played were complete blowouts and it became obvious on why timed clock is not as fun as playing to a game point. When the games become blowouts and one team takes a large lead, both teams become uninterested in playing anymore because one knows they’ve won while the other kind of gives up, so both teams becomes extremely lazy. Lots of long 3 pointers are taken and cherry picking becomes abundant. It’s not that the players are bad, it’s just players become a bit unmotivated when the outcome is practically determined. Offensive stats increase so even though there were a lot of 3 pointers made, they probably weren’t the best shots taken.

Conclusion

Easy to join pickup group that allowed anybody to play. Nice indoor court with running clock and scoreboard made it extremely fun to play. I do encourage anyone staying near LA or Anaheim to check out this Meetup group on Monday night if they are dying to get a good run in. But I will say that at $10 a day, it’s on the expensive side and I am unsure if I would come here regularly.