Basketball Goal

A neighbor down the street has a basketball goal beside their driveway, and our boys have been going down there to shoot hoops for a couple of weeks. Even before this, Wifegrit has been saying we should get a basketball goal for our yard for a while. I’m not a sportsy kind of guy, so a basketball goal in my yard just sounds weird. But it would give the boys some fun, so, at last, we went shopping for a goal.

We just wanted a portable goal — the kind with a base to fill with water or sand — that could adjust from lower to full height as the boys grew. We went to Dick’s sporting goods first. It seemed the logical place to start for sports equipment.

Holy crap! Their goals are expensive! Even ignoring the $1600 permanent posts and goals, their temp stuff runs up to $600. Come on, we’re getting this so the boys can play outside, not start a basketball all stars game. So we left Dick’s.

We then went to our regular everything-we-need store, Target. We quickly found several goals for less than $200. Yay! Thank you, Target. We ended up choosing one for $160, and took it home.

I was intending to set up the goal on Saturday, but it rained all day long. So I got out there Sunday after lunch, and with Calfgrit7’s help, (and a little assistance from Calfgrit11), it only took 3 hours to assemble.

The instructions say it requires “2 competent adults” to build, but we only had one semi-competent adult and a 7 year old. But I think we did a decent enough job that it won’t fall apart tomorrow.

Bullgrit