Austin

776 days or 25 months or 2.1 years later, I have finally begun traveling again and you know what that means right? 

This was my first pickup basketball experience since March 2020, pre-covid, and while I desperately tried to keep my blog active with atypical basketball experiences, nothing could replace the experience of wandering around a new city in hopes to find a place to play some pickup basketball.

I will admit that I’m going to do Austin a bit differently this time around. Instead of focusing on one place to play basketball, I will go and explore multiple courts around the city and provide reviews on popularity, playing courts, and other related things that any pickup baller would be interested in knowing. Also, taking feedback from all my readers (har har), I was told to post more media and videos to give a clearer view of what the courts are like. 

This change also stemmed from the fact that Austin interestingly did not have an easy way to find a centralized place for pickup basketball. As the new up-and-coming tech city of the USA, I was hoping someone had built some type of app that allowed people to pay and play at scheduled locations for some pickup basketball similar to NYC, Chicago, or SF. Even the Dallas experience was a bit easier than Austin. Although I never actually played 5x5 in Dallas, it made me appreciate the idea of the app (fun fact - the founders of hoopclub sold to a larger organization with even more times and places to play basketball).

Anyways, no time to dwell on what Austin did not have, I had to power through and put together a list of courts I wanted to target to check out. I started with the usual google search and surprisingly Reddit actually provided the best places to start. There was also a private facebook group that was more active than expected but at times, when people posted asking to play pickup basketball, no one would respond. I passed on posting anything on Facebook at this time, but I do think that if you will be in Austin for a longer period of time, you should join this group and follow the posts of open gym times and get a sense from the posts of where people play. 

I stayed in downtown Austin for 3 days and one biggest difference between pre-covid and now was that Scooter fever had taken over and it made my traveling between courts much faster than walking, cheaper than uber/lyfts, and more direct than public transportation!

Austin Recreational Center

What better place to start than the city recreational center to see what kind of basketball open gym times they had. They posted their open gym times on their site and to my surprise, they actually update it on a bi-weekly cadence. Though, because of my skepticism, I still had to check it out to see if the events on the calendar were actually up to date. Unfortunately, I visited on Monday evening time at 6pm which meant that the gym was reserved 

Regardless, I was going to of course check out the gym for research purposes and it ended up being reserved for a zumba class. 

Pease Basketball Court

Next, on to our first of many outdoor basketball courts, Pease basketball courts, which were only 0.5 miles away from the Austin recreational center. 

This seemed like the place to be on a Monday evening with a full-court 5x5 game with multiple teams/people waiting to play next. A pre-covid me would have tried to jump on but it seemed like at least a 2 game wait and I wanted to explore other courts before the sunset, so I only watched long enough to see what they played to and how they determined who played next. 

Games were straight up to 11 with 1s and 2s. After the game ended, the winning team stayed on and the next batch of people shot for 5 from the 3 point line. Those who missed had to wait for the next game. 

Overall a very solid court with well drawn lines and nice rim/backboard combination. 

Westernfield Basketball Court

On a beautiful weekday afternoon/evening, one would expect a ton of basketballers to enjoy a nice game of pickup basketball, but that was not the case at this court. While it was a decent court, there is one reason why real ballers wouldn't come here. 

Here’s the court. Can you guess why?

Well, if you check out the 3-point line at the corners, you’ll see that it doesn’t extend to the end line, meaning that there are no such things as corner 3 here. For such a large and beautifully drawn court, it was disappointing to see that the 3-point line design was miscalculated. 

Even though I came here on 1 day, my guess is that this place wouldn’t have any serious ballers on any given day. 

Clark Basketball Courts

I didn’t realize this but the Clark Basketball Courts were on the University of Texas campus. 

Fun fact, you can’t park your scooter on campus as it’s geofenced from scooters running over students. 

Also, the courts were not open to the public as you needed a student ID to go in and play. I guess that makes sense since it’s a campus court and it prevents creepy older people like myself from playing against college kids. 

Kudos to the University of Texas for keeping students safe!

Please, don’t come here expecting to play pickup basketball

Alamo Pocket Park

I’ve checked out indoor courts, and I’ve checked out outdoor courts but I believe this is the first court in this blog that is half and half! It’s an outdoor court with a roof. 

While this court does have a pretty nice basketball court, I did notice a ton of skid marks on the floor which tells me that this court is probably used more for rollerblading or scootering than actually playing basketball. 

This could be a popular place if you wanted to play basketball on a rainy day.

Comal Pocket Park

My scooter ran out of battery when coming to this court and I guess it was a sign for me not to continue to this court, but I was determined to check it out since I was already halfway there

In the end, I should have just turned around as this court turned out to be just a half-court. I doubt anyone would come here looking for a good run. 

Utilize this court for a good shootaround at best. 

Metz Basketball Court

Not basketball related but check out this cool robo delivery cart just minding its own business to serve some hungry customers…

Alrighty, the last but not least basketball court I checked out, and similar to the Alamo Pocket Park court, this also had a roof on top which makes me believe it’s the place to be for shade and rainy day basketball. I was also excited to see people actually playing on this court. 

Even though there were more than 10 people on this court, the ballers here seemed keen on playing just 4x4 half court. Even with people waiting on the other half to jump on, they continued to play 4x4 after the game ended. The courts did look pretty large so it could have been too much running for an average weekend baller. 

Again, sticking to my agenda, I stuck around to find out what they played to. Games were 1s and 2s to 15, straight up. 

Conclusion 

For the first time in any city, I did not actually play pickup basketball. Even though I was itching to jump in, I decided to explore the multiple courts and provide pictures/videos to help you make your own analysis of the courts. While most courts I checked out were outdoor courts, I am sure there are indoor runs happening somewhere…I’ll just have to figure them out the next time I make it to the city again.