Vancouver II

*UPDATE* 2024 Vancouver Perfect Day

This is part 2 of a 2 part series for Vancouver. I played in an outdoor court and indoor court. This one is for the indoor court. If you are interested in an outdoor court for Vancouver, read about it HERE!

This is a university’s student recreational center that actually allowed outsiders (non-student, faculty, and staff) to drop in and play. I assume it’s safe to say that if you were to arrive late afternoon/evening times, there will be a copious amount of students already playing basketball and all you have to do is find a court and call next. Also as a university gym, this has all the basic amenities such as bathrooms, showers and well maintained basketball courts. Be prepared to play with college aged students.

Finding and getting to the court (5 – It seems like anybody can play but it’s a bit far from downtown)

My friends and I had an extra day in Vancouver so we decided to check out an indoor basketball gym. We were going to visit University of British Columbia (UBC) anyways so we decided to try and play some basketball there. But even if you didn’t have a place to play in mind, the city of Vancouver has a pretty sweet ‘drop in’ basketball website that lists all the indoor gyms where basketball is being played, and whether it accepts people to ‘drop in’ and play on a specific day and time. For UBC, ‘drop in’ and play would only be $5/person. I also found that was a bit odd because typically university gyms are strictly for students, faculty and staff, but UBC allowed anybody to play. This could just be because we were there during the summer.

I was also skeptical whether there would be anybody playing basketball because it was summer but since we were going to be there, we decided to check it out.

UBC Student Recreational Centre is about 20 minutes drive from downtown Vancouver and there are buses that get there.

Getting into the Student Recreational Centre was (not) difficult. As we walked closer to the recreational center, we heard basketballs bouncing. Naturally, we gravitated towards the sounds of basketball. As we got closer we were able to see into the gym through the glass doors and there were a TON of people playing. We also noticed that the door was propped open so we may or may not have gone directly into the gym and may or may not have paid. There were signs posted that you must have an orange wrist band to play. I assume you get the orange wrist band from going through the main entrance but I would say 20% of the people did not have an orange wrist band.

We went on a Saturday afternoon around 5pm during summer session.

The Basketball Court (9 – I would not expect anything lower than a 9 for any university’s basketball court)

Very standard university recreational basketball courts. There were 3 courts in total but one of them was split down with a divider for badminton. The other 2 courts were for basketball. It had everything you would expect for a basketball court so I will not go into any more detail here.

And because this was a university gym, the water fountains and bathrooms were easily accessible.

The only reason I did not give it a perfect 10 is because I know there are better courts out there. One minor picky thing was that there was not enough natural light so the gym looked dark from the inside.

The Players (7 – College kids just looking to play basketball)

Like I mentioned above, there were 2 full courts dedicated to basketball. One was for full court while the other contained 2 half court games. It seemed like most players wanted to play half court rather than full court because there were a lot more people waiting to play next for half. There were plenty of players in the gym and it made me wonder how many players would be in there if it had been during the actual school year. UBC is also nicknamed University of Billion Chinese and probably 75% of the people there were Chinese.

We only played full court, so I will only talk about the full court players and games.

We may have been the oldest people there because I am assuming that most players were students. But I think we still look pretty young so we fit right in. Average age was probably 20 and the average height was 5’9 with the tallest being 6’6 and the shortest was 5’3. Besides a 6’6 kid and 6’3 guy, I don’t think anybody else was above 6′.

Everyone was very solid and the players were typically more guard oriented than big man focused. The short guards usually had decent handles (though maybe too much dribbling around) and quick pull up jumpers. Big men were at a premium and the good big men dominated the middles.

The Game (8 – Very standard university pickup basketball)

Games were to 11 by 1’s and 2’s. We didn’t get to a situation where it was a win by 2 or straight up so I cannot comment here. Easy to call out of bounds because of standard basketball court lines and not much arguing at all. Everyone respected the call and play continued on.

Most pick and roll situations involved the pick rolling out to the three-point line rather than to the basketball and that’s probably more correlated to most of the players being guards. Though, I don’t think anyone spent the majority of their time in the paint, even the over 6′ guys roamed around the 3 point line shooting a lot of threes. But when they did go down low, they were dominant.

Conclusion

Very standard college/university pick-up basketball. Nothing out of the norm and everyone is a lot friendlier than outdoor basketball. There was a ton of people during the summer, so I would assume that there would be even more people during the school year, making this place where you could probably run a 3×3 half or 5×5 full anytime of the year. Anybody in Vancouver looking for easy and safe indoor playing facility should consider UBC.