Basketball is a no-net game on the city’s outdoor courts
Shooting baskets on a city-operated basketball court will almost always be a game played without netting on the hoops.
Not that the city doesn’t want to string up nets at its outdoor courts, but it has learned that there’s no point.
Nicolas Bello emailed to say he feels sorry for kids who play basketball on the two courts next to the Moss Park Arena, at Queen and Sherbourne Sts., because the hoops don’t have any nets on them.
“I live and work near the Moss Park area,” Bello said. “Every day I walk through and note that sorry state of the basketball hoops. They are either missing nets or the nets are torn and virtually useless. The courts are popular so it’d be great if new nets could be installed, especially since Toronto wants to encourage healthy living/physical activity.
“Below you can see my tweets and the responses from 311. It looks like nobody wants to take ownership of these basketball nets.”
He included a link to Twitter, showing he tweeted Toronto 311 to report the netless hoops on April 20 and got a reply the same day saying “nets will be replaced at the beginning of May.”
When that hadn’t happened by early June, he sent us a note asking if we could prod the city into stringing up the netting.
We went there and found no netting on two of the four hoops, while only a sorry tangle of damaged string dangled from the other two hoops. Status: We got in touch with Matthew Cutler, who deals with media for the parks department and sent us a surprising explanation for the absence of netting: “As it turns out, the nets are managed by the Parks section. Our standard is to ensure the backboard and hoop is in good repair, but Parks doesn’t install or maintain nets. Our crews have found that they are regularly damaged and are a target for vandalism. Sometimes, permit users or our recreation section will install nets for their programs or leagues, leaving them responsible for maintenance. Our parks crew will remove the old nets, but new ones won’t go up unless a permit holder or recreation staff do so for their programming.” What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.