Basketball Hoop Photography From Small Town America
Basketball is everywhere in America, but some of the most interesting places to find the game are far from arenas, school gyms, and polished city courts. For more than 15 years, I’ve been photographing old basketball hoops, handmade backboards, rural courts, and forgotten places where the game quietly remains part of the landscape.
These photographs are part of my long-term series, American Backcourts, a project made while driving hundreds of thousands of miles across the United States. The hoops appear in front yards, small towns, reservations, farms, alleys, barns, and open spaces where the game feels less like a sport and more like a shared American language.
Homemade basketball hoop on a telephone pole - Utah
What Basketball in America Actually Looks Like
The places where these photographs are made rarely resemble what most people picture when they think about basketball.
There are no crowds, no painted lines, no bleachers.
A rim welded to a piece of scrap metal.
A backboard cut from plywood.
A hoop mounted to a barn, a telephone pole, or the side of a house.
In some places, the court is nothing more than a patch of dirt. In others, it’s a cracked slab of asphalt surrounded by open land. What matters isn’t the condition—it’s the fact that the game exists there at all.
Weeds growing through the cracks of an outdoor basketball court in Massachusetts
Fine art photograph of a basketball court on the Llano Estacado in Texas
Why These Hoops Matter
Most of these hoops weren’t built to last. They were put up to be used—then repaired, modified, or eventually left behind.
Over time, they start to reflect the place they’re in.
Wind bends the rim.
Sun fades the paint.
Weather breaks down the backboard.
What’s left becomes less about basketball itself and more about time, use, and memory. The game leaves a mark, even when no one is there.
A weathered hoop mounted directly to a small house, where basketball becomes part of the everyday landscape.
A handmade hoop built from a crate and painted board, showing how the game finds a way in improvised spaces.
A Different Kind of Basketball Culture
Basketball culture is usually shown through arenas, leagues, and players.
But there’s another version of it—quieter, less visible, and just as widespread.
It’s found in backyards, alleys, reservations, and small towns where the game doesn’t need an audience. These are places where people play because the hoop is there, because it always has been, or because someone decided to build one.
That version of the game doesn’t get documented very often. That’s what this project is trying to hold onto.
Markings on an old barn where a basketball hoop once hung on a farm in West Virginia
Black and white photograph of a basketball rim hung on a tree stump with no backboard in Upstate New York
The American Backcourts Project
These photographs are part of American Backcourts, an ongoing series documenting basketball hoops across the United States. The work has been made over more than a decade of travel, photographing the places where the game exists outside of organized courts and arenas.
Over time, the project has been exhibited in galleries and museums, published in basketball culture books and magazines, and collected as fine art prints by people drawn to this quieter side of the game.
If you want to explore the full body of work:
→ View the American Backcourts basketball photography gallery
→ Explore available basketball photography prints
Inquire about commercial and editorial licensing of my basketball hoop photography
Photograph of an outdoor basketball court in a small Western Massachusetts town
Photograph of a basketball hoop on an old ranch in Colorado
