New York City

New York City boasts one of the richest history of basketball, and I made sure to play at least once during my weekend trip here. One could easily google search basketball courts in NYC and find plentiful options all over the city.

Unfortunately for me, it rained all weekend, so I did not get the chance to check out the famous Rucker Park or any of the other outdoor courts. But New York does have one of those pick-up basketball websites, similar to that I found in Dallas, called https://indoorhoops.com/nyc .

So for this blog post, I’ll be reviewing the site, rather than a physical court.

Their site claims that they “bring people together through the game of basketball without the rigidity and pressure of gym memberships and league play”, and I wanted to test if that was true. They’ve been around for quite some time now, since 2011 but this is the first time I’ve heard or used them. Their website seems a lot more mature than the others and I was excited to try them out.

When I first went to their website, I saw that they were in multiple cities, Chicago, Connecticut, NYC, San Francisco and Others. But soon after clicking around, you notice that only Chicago and NYC had any games available, which makes sense because they picked cities where they felt had the largest basketball population.

The site was pretty easy to use as you saw a long list of pickup games in the city, and I meant it was extremely long. There were at least 8 pickup games a day in multiple locations throughout the cities. No matter where you are, it seemed like you’d be able to find a game. I didn’t find anywhere on the site that mentioned what would happen if the games did not fill up for 5 on 5, but I’d hope that they cancel and refund you money.

I ended up choosing a court in Hell’s Kitchen and you quickly see how many spots are open. The cap is 15 players per session. When I booked, there were still 7 spots available so I was a bit nervous that it might not fill up because of past experiences in other cities, but ultimately all 15 spots filled up by the day before the session.

One part that interested me the most was the ‘SKILL” rating. They had a rating system, where you rated yourself on how good you think you are. That way you know the range of skill level of people going to that session, so you can pick and choose sessions depending on your skill level. They even had a nice little chart to help you pick what skill level you think you are. I did notice that there was no 5.0 rating, maybe because they didn’t want people overrating themselves. Though it would be awesome if they had a way where you could rate other people, that way you can compare your own ratings vs what others rate you. But I expect that people may abuse the system and get friends to rate each other high, and others may purposely rate you a 1 because you didn’t pass them the ball for an open 3 point that one time during a 5 game set…but with enough reviewers, it should normalize. I ended up giving myself a 2.5. the range was from 2-3.5 for my session.

Payment was easy, just pay with a credit card and done. The one part that irked me just a bit was that they did not send a confirmation email. I looked all over my spam and inbox and double checked I had my email correct, but there was no confirmation email. I saved my booking ID and was ready come Saturday.

On the rainy Saturday afternoon, I made my way to the high school gym in Hell’s Kitchen. Like most places in NYC, the entrance seemed to be this odd door that no one would expect to open. Once in, you could hear the bouncing of the basketballs and easily find the gym. There was a person at the entrance with a laptop and he checked people in. Said my name and in I went. Pretty easy, but they must be paying a person to check people in at all locations so there is a cost for them there.

There was a game going on before us but they were very good at keeping sessions on schedule so they immediately ended at their allocated time, so our session could get on the court.

The website did have rules so there would be no confusion on it, and they stayed true as all games were played to 7, and there were no ‘And 1’s’. There was a 3 point line so some games could go quick with three 3’s and a 2 (2’s and 1’s)

I would say most people were rated correctly as everyone has played the game of basketball before and it was a fun run. I thought about this again, and I actually don’t think anybody would put themselves lower than a 2 or high than a 3.5 anyways because no one wants to play with someone that sucks or someone who thinks they are that good. So if I had to guess, 95% of the players would be rated between a 2 and 3.5.

The players were much better than most places I’ve played in with good guards, aggressive post players, and streaky shooters. The most memorable players that I will take away from my visit to NYC is this guy in a Chicago Bulls jersey with the strongest “Noo Yawk” accent and mentality I’ve ever heard. I was happy to have him on my team because there was no way he was losing any argument. He would straight up argue with the other team, but was the nicest person to his own team, even apologizing for shots he took.

Games went pretty quick, though 1 or 2 games did stall forever as teams purposely fouled each other so they wouldn’t get the game winning point. I’d say that there were probably 8 games played during that 2-hour session, so lots of opportunity to play. It was probably even too much as I was completely exhausted by the end and couldn’t play more anyways. Teams were very balanced during our session, so the 3 teams never switched players as each team took to the court with the same group they started out with (I’ll probably say this is rare…).

Conclusion

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the IndoorHoops network they put together. They had a simple website that allowed anybody to pick a game and the timeslot they wanted and made it extremely easy for players to participate. The whole process was pretty seamless and I’m looking forward to them moving to additional cities around the country. I was even impressed with their email marketing, because 1 month after leaving NYC and not using their platform, they sent me a “we haven’t see you on the court” email and included a 25% discount code in it. If you ever go to NYC and want to play pickup basketball indoors, I would definitely check out https://indoorhoops.com/nyc