Okay, so I’ve been wanting to set up a little basketball court in my backyard for a while now. I didn’t want anything permanent, and I definitely didn’t want to pour concrete. I saw these portable wooden flooring things online, made with LVL (whatever that is!), and figured I’d give it a shot. It seemed…doable.

The Hunt for the Right Stuff

First thing I did was, of course, search online. I typed somthing like:”LVL Basketball hard portable wooden flooring”. Finding the actual flooring was a bit of a pain. There are tons of options, but not many specifically for basketball, and even fewer that screamed “easy to assemble!” I finally found a few companies that made these interlocking panels. The pictures looked promising – these big squares that click together like giant puzzle pieces.

Getting it All Together

Delivery day! The delivery truck came to drop all the pieces off. Man, the delivery guy was sweating. It was way heavier than I thought. They stacked it at my garage door. I thought “oh shit”, how am I going to move all this? And after 15 minutes of thinking, I decided to move them one by one into the backyard. I started opening boxes and laying out the panels. It was a little confusing at first, figuring out which side was up and how the locking mechanisms worked. There were these little tabs and grooves, and you had to kind of wiggle them together.

After several tries of putting two pieces together, I felt I’m getting the hang of it.

The Build

It’s all about the lining, I did one row, then the second, making sure the edges all snapped in tight. Once I got a few rows down, it started to go much faster. It’s kind of satisfying, that “click” when they lock together. My back started to hurt a little, though. Lots of bending over!

I kept going, row by row, and the court started to take shape. It looked pretty good, actually! Much better than the patchy grass that was there before. I realized I underestimated the amount of space needed. I had to move a few flower pots to make enough room. No big deal.

The Finished Product

Finally done! It took me most of the afternoon, but I had a fully assembled, (mostly) level basketball court. It’s not perfect – a couple of the panels didn’t quite line up perfectly, but it’s good enough for some casual shooting around. I bounced a basketball on it, and it felt pretty solid. Not exactly like an indoor gym floor, but definitely playable.

I even got my kids involved for a bit. They were useless at putting the pieces down, but they enjoyed running around on the finished court. Small victories, right?

The Verdict

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It was a bit of work, and my back is definitely feeling it, but it’s a huge improvement. Now, I just have to get a basketball hoop, and I will be ready to play basketball anytime I want. It might not be NBA-regulation, but it’s my little piece of basketball heaven, right in my backyard. And if I ever move, I can just unclick it all and take it with me. Pretty cool.