During the summer, London’s basketball courts were some of the first free public spaces to reopen post-lockdown. Scattered across the capital, each one is a unique, self-contained island – home to an impressive cast of regulars, for whom community is everything.
Text: Alex King Photography: Theo McInnes
London’s basketball courts are worlds unto themselves. They are islands, an archipelago of concrete rectangles, spread out across the capital. Each one has its own energy and diverse cast, which usually reflects the economic, r acial and social dynamics of the area it resides in.
At the beginning of summer, as the city’s lockdown restrictions began to lift, the courts were some of the first free spaces to reopen. Following a period of prolonged isolation, they allowed young people to come together; to move and breathe again. Each court, while totally unique, is home to a similar kind of community: one that paints a broad picture of diversity and coexistence, reflecting the true face of the capital today.
In the UK, under-25s have carried the brunt of the psychological fallout from COVID-19. Research has found that London’s young people are some of the most unhappy and anxious in Europe, with mental health worst among children growing up in poverty – and in their annual report for 2020, the Social Metrics Commission found that children of colour are twice as likely to grow up in poverty than their white counterparts. In that context, basketball courts are vital spaces for physical and mental health. But while the sport is the second most popular team one in the country, and approximately 75 per cent of participants in London belong to communities of colour, it receives much less funding than its counterparts.
“This summer was a crazy time for knives, guns and violence,” says Tony Lazare, who grew up in London and founded the London Basketball Association (LBA) in 2012, which works to develop the sport as a tool for social change. “It’s scary to be a young person in London these days. Whether you’re looking for trouble or not, there are some contexts, like school, where it’s pretty much unavoidable. People can migrate to the bad so quickly.”
“But basketball can be a route
out of that,” Tony continues. “If I didn’t have it, I know I would be down a dirty road, doing things that society deems unacceptable. The reason I work so hard with basketball is because of the profound impact it had on my own life.”
The LBA are one of the groups trying to increase the part
