Where Hoop Dreams Die: In the Land of LeBron, Nobody Wants a Basketball Court

From this week’s issue of Scene: Michael Gill looks at the dearth of basketball courts around Cleveland and why cities are so against them.

On a sunny afternoon in the opening days of summer break, half a dozen middle-school kids rode their bicycles in loops around the lone basketball court at Impett Park, in Cleveland’s comfortably middle class West Park neighborhood. The court was of no use to anybody else, not since it had been destroyed by unknown vandals in the dead of night.

Back in April, residents and cops speculate, somebody hitched a truck to the thick steel poles that supported the backboards, then made like a tractor pull — bending one hoop almost to the ground and the other to about half its regulation height. The culprit left tire tracks, but little else to go on. The police report declares it “criminal damaging, vandalism to city property.”

But aside from snickers and the occasional knowing smile, nobody in West Park said a word. The crime was investigated only in the technical sense, because a Cleveland parks worker making the rounds took note of the damage and called it in.

“They did an excellent job investigating,” says one neighbor, a tongue-in-cheek response to the police’s obligatory knocks on neighborhood doors to see if anyone saw anything suspicious. Of course, nobody did.

For years, residents warily eyed the crowds who gathered at what had been the only public basketball court in mostly white West Park. A short walk from toddlers’ swings and a tee-ball field was a hotbed of adult basketball — heated games with often heated language, and accusations of illegal activity.

“It’s not kids in the neighborhood,” says one nearby neighbor, who can eye the court through the chain-link fence of his well-manicured backyard. “They are … how should I put it? They don’t belong here. I’m not prejudiced. But these bozos would constantly ‘F-you! F-you! F-you!'” He says he’s seen drug transactions there. When he speaks of it his voice rises into an angry simmer. It’s his backyard we’re talking about. He’s got granddaughters.

“They ruin it for themselves,” he says. “I think everybody finally got fed up with the language, and one person took it upon themselves to remedy the situation. Does anyone know who did it? Noooooooooooo,” he says with the sarcasm of a man who knows exactly who did it.

The vigilante groundskeeping at Impett Park is emblematic of battles that have taken place over basketball courts across the region, especially in neighborhoods where poverty rubs shoulders with the middle class and the friction of culture clash can set off sparks. After decades of pick-up games in city parks from Lakewood to Euclid, cities have quietly removed their courts in favor of skate parks, grassy fields — anything that might be less likely to attract the wrong crowd.

This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 6, 2010.