Okay guys, let me dump my timber basketball base experiment today. Seriously thought I could engineer shock absorption into a cheap DIY hoop setup. Spoiler: wood fights back.

The Dumb Starting Point

Grabbed warped pine boards from my garage that’d been sitting since 2018 dustier than my gym membership card. Sawed four leg pieces while coughing through sawdust clouds. Measured wrong twice – third try got ugly but functional 28-inch legs. Screwed ’em into a plywood platform with the wobbliest hand drill known to mankind. Every bolt sank crooked like drunk fence posts.

Rubber Band Fiasco

Here’s where genius struck: cut up old bike inner tubes as “shock absorbers”. Stretched rubber strips across the platform where the pole mounts. Bolted the pole through rubber into wood – took three hours wrestling stripped screws. First test dunk? Whole contraption swayed like palm trees in a hurricane. Rim vibrated so hard my coffee cup walked off the table. Neighbor yelled “Earthquake?” from his yard.

Emergency Concrete Jazz

Panic-poured leftover Quikrete into buckets. Stuck each leg bucket thinking “This’ll stiffen it”. Cement hardened unevenly – base leaned harder than Pisa’s tower. Tried shoving beer coasters under the short leg. Now it rattled AND listed every dribble. Ball bounced sideways off warped boards like pinball chaos. My kid’s Nerf hoop performed better.

Gorilla Tape Savior

Wrapped entire base junction in that thick black tape. Slapped rubber mat scraps under bucket bases. Added random sandbags for “gravity stability”. Final result:

• Absorbs shock? Barely
• Stands upright? Mostly
• Embarrassment level? Maximum

Still took twenty ugly jumpers. Made one shot – base groaned like dying whale timber. Moral? Sometimes wood just wants to be a shelf.