Backyard Basketball Court Placement and Design

A video transcript featuring Scott Cohen, The Green Scene

I'm standing atop a large slab of concrete that's going to become a basketball sport court for this client, one of the items they had on their wish list. I placed it in the back part of the property and pushed it to the side, tucking it into the slope a little bit with a retaining wall here so it didn't take up the entire yard.

Court location
With the basketball court, remember you're going to be shooting towards that hoop and what we did is we talked about, "Well, are we going to be playing more in the afternoon or more in the morning?" Because if you're shooting in the morning and you shoot in the east, that sun is going be in your eyes. In this case, the client said they plan on playing mostly in the afternoons and evening. So we put this court on the east side of the property so that the sun won't be in their eyes in the afternoon and late afternoon time.

Court materials and construction
This concrete slab is poured over about 4 inches of gravel, and it's a 4-inch-thick concrete slab that's been reinforced with rebar steel at 18 inches on center, and that gives us a nice, sturdy slab to start with. It's about 40 by 30 feet in size, so it's got a three-point line and it's going to be almost a full half-court.

The next step for us to finish this court off is to apply a rubberized textured coating, and that comes in a liquid and it's applied with large squeegees. Usually we use darker greens, lighter greens in the key, and then we stripe it in either white or black. But I'm waiting for this client to make a decision so I can finish this course off. They're not sure whether they want to go in tans and browns with black striping or light greens or dark greens. And the husband is thinking maybe he wants it the colors of his favorite team. So we're still working on those details, and it's one of the many details that we have to choose in this backyard.