New York City II

After finishing writing this post, I realized how unoriginal I was as my opening sentence for this blog was almost identical to my 2018 New York City Post...

NYC boasts famous basketball courts such as Rucker Park, Madison Square Garden, The Cage and during my short visit to the ‘Mecca of Basketball’, it was imperative that I play on one of those courts. Unfortunately for me, I ended up playing on the courts of Penn South Playground, W 26th St, New York, NY 10001. 

I went on a Saturday afternoon at around 3pm with the sun blazing on our necks and eyes. The playground featured 2 full length courts with metal backboards, double rims and no nets. While the hoops weren’t ideal, the backboards were surprisingly the soft metal kind that did not ‘clang’ each time the ball hit it. 

The court itself had well drawn lines and good space for corner 3’s. The biggest fault of this court was 2 fold

• First, the court was on a slight slant, which made one side of the court higher than the other, which ultimately made one hoop a bit taller than the other

• Second, the sun never seemed to fully set behind the buildings, which caused the court  to be in half shade and half sun the entire time we played. Most players gravitated towards the shaded part of the court, so if you could withstand the heat, then you could have used it towards your advantage. 

As for the game itself, this was the first pickup basketball game where we played with 2s and 3s. It just makes so much more sense as 2s and 3s are seemingly played at all levels of basketball except for pickup basketball. I approve

One other interesting note is that because of the slight slant in the court, the teams switched sides halfway into the  game so neither team had an unfair advantage

Conclusion

Two large courts that aren't the highest of quality, but sufficient enough to play ball for any hungry basketballer. There was actually a third ‘fault’ for this playground that I should have mentioned above, and that was that the 2nd basketball court was actually used for games of volleyball. So if you can avoid any flying volleyballs, then this is a good court to get some good runs in!