Is Playground Basketball Dying?

There is an interesting post on playground basketball dying at ESPN recently:

While I can see this happening for the elite players and for well-off suburbanites (there is money and facilities available for them), I don’t see why this would be true otherwise.

Anyone here do this when they were young? Do your kids still do it?

Any thoughts?

I am 30 and growing up, we used to spend most of our days at the playground. We would head over to the courts right after school and play until after dark. On weekends, we would be at the playground by 10 or 11am and stay until we couldn’t pass the ball without hitting someone in the face. Sometimes we would grab some slices for lunch but we usually waited until after to get food. I haven’t been home (NJ) in about 4 years but I remember the playgrounds being emptier than they were when I was growing up. In the summer we would run 5 on 5 games all day with teams waiting on the side to play. Even in the winter we could get a few half court games going if the courts were cleared off. The last few times I played back home, however, it was just me and some of my friends. No strangers or neighborhood kids showed up to play at all.

At first I thought this was mostly regional, but I also noticed the same issue in Pittsburgh before I left there. That article talks a lot about the AAU caliber players leaving the playground game behind for fear of injuries or eroding skills, but I think that is only part of the issue. A lot of it comes down to kids not playing outside as much anymore.

If you get a chance, PastTense, check out this article from Grantland: It talks about the decline of basketball in NYC

The article seems to focus on urban playgrounds and elite players. I can’t comment on that, but I can say that around here (Raleigh), all the schools and parks, and many of the neighborhoods, have basketball courts that seem to be pretty well-used. We’re frequently over at our local community center and there are outside courts that I’ve never seen empty, even when I’m dropping my kids off at camp at 8 am on a weekday morning. My kids and their buddies are still a little young to venture over to the nearest outside court, so they play a lot of driveway ball…most people with kids around here have one of those portable goals.

I can see, though, that kids competing for scholarships or kids who live in areas where the playgrounds may be unsafe would avoid the outside courts.