Game On: Basketball at Its Purest

While March Madness takes center stage, hoops obsessives take to their own courts.

SI Staff | Mar 30, 2022

Game On: Basketball at Its Purest /

Full Frame is Sports Illustrated’s exclusive newsletter for subscribers, highlighting the stories and personalities behind some of SI’s photography.

To get the best of SI in your inbox every weekday, sign up here. To see even more from SI’s photographers, follow @sifullframe on Instagram. If you missed our story on the unretiring of all-time great athletes, you can find it here.

A version of this piece appears in the March 2022 issue of SI.

If you’re a basketball fan, you like where we’re headed on the calendar. The men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. The NBA playoffs and WNBA tip off soon after. Hoops obsessives might barely leave the couch before June—but they will, because the best reminder of why we love the game is shooting and rebounding ourselves. So SI photographers went searching for some of the country’s most picturesque pickup spots. No crowds, no TV cameras—just basketball at its purest.