Spalding Ultimate Hybrid Portable Basketball Hoop

I bought this hoop over a year ago and as others have said, this is an awesome freestanding hoop. Also as others have said, the assembly process is not great. I consider myself a fairly handy person, but these directions were not the best and left a lot of uncertainty once proceeding -- some times I guessed right on the assembly, other times I did not and had to back track by disassembling pieces. The orientation of some pieces were confusing in the directions and I thought they could have been more clear.I will add some tips. This is a two person job. Also helps to have a saw horse or something similar. At certain points in the assembly it will need to be leaned over and having this helps. I used a portable outfeed stand used for table saws and chop saws.Try to be patient. This is an all day assembly. It won't take all day to put it together -- 3 or 4 hours, but you will need the rest of the day to calm down and tally up the money in the family swear jar. Maybe grab some friends and some beers and make a day out of it.Based on the reviews, I was anticipating a challenging assembly. I had considered purchasing the "professional" assembly service. At the time of purchase this service was 1/3 of the price of the hoop. As with everything else these days, it appears the price of this hoop has went up. In spring of '23 I paid under eight hundred. I believed that to be a good value. I see the price now is near fifteen hundred when you figure in tax. This is an awesome hoop but at that price I'm not sure whether I would have still decided to buy it -- I probably would have. If you got the money -- this is a lifetime purchase and will last. One of those cry once vs cry twice situations.Having said all that this is a sweet hoop. I placed several paving sand bags purchased from the orange home store and filled the base with water. It is very sturdy. It looks great in the driveway compared to other hoops you see around. The large clear backboard stands out in the neighborhood and looks and performs much better than the smaller onesShipping was fine -- scheduled delivery If I recall. The hoop came in perfect condition. After one year, hoop is showing minimal to no wear from being outside in pacific northwest weather.

Summary: as mentioned by some other reviewers, the main poles cannot be fitted together correctly. Do not buy.Details:The initial steps of constructing this monstrosity entail putting the three sections of the main pole together. So one end of one goes into the slightly wider end of the other, and you’re supposed to “bounce” them on the ground on a piece of scrap wood (which hopefully you have a piece of sitting around) to get them fully seated. As the directions state, they must be at least 4 inches overlapping; if not, you’re told to call customer service.Having read reviews, I had noted a couple people had mentioned that this step itself was quite a challenge, and had offered some suggestions, one being to lubricate the pole ends do help them slide against one another. Used some soap to do that, and then got to bouncing. After I don’t know how long- maybe 100 bounces, we realized we were still a full 1/2 inch short of the minimum. Called customer service, who basically had little to offer than just keep bouncing them, and it may take awhile. Ok, fair enough, so we got to bouncing again. After again maybe 100 or bounces, we’d moved it another 1/4 inch. Called again. Asked by rep, “did you sand the ends?” Umm, no the directions didn’t say anything about that. “You must sand!” Well, too late for that.With it apparent bouncing wasn’t going to get it done, asked my friend to come by with a sledgehammer. We set it up against a tree, and gave it a couple wacks. On the second hit, it moved a decent amount. One more hit and it was perfect! Ok, so the directions are wrong, but with the right tool, they can be properly forced together, right?Well, didn’t turn out to be the case. Once we took this section and tried to drive the third pole into it, first the bouncing didn’t get it there, and then we started sledge hammering. This time, even the sledge couldn’t get the overlap within tolerance and worse, even obviously using a wooden block where we were hitting, the bottom end of the third pole got bent! Also, I should mention we did sand the ends this time, and it didn’t seem to make any difference.At this point, having wasted hours we realized there was nothing more to do. Thankfully Amazon made the return fairly easy, even taking the partially assembled pole separate from the rest of the box.Bottom line is, this design only works if we are assured the poles are being manufactured within tolerances to allow them to be fitted by bouncing them. That plainly isn’t the case. Avoid this thing at all costs.

After reading some of the previous reviews, I was a little bit concerned about the amount of time, effort and difficulty some people said it was to assemble this particular Portable basket ball hoop. Well, I am here to tell you, it was not that difficult, and I assembled it on the tailgate of my pickup truck 100% by myself in about 3 hours. Does it take some mechanical skills to assemble? yes it does. Does it take some reading skills to understand the instructions? yes it does. For the most part, if you follow the instructions and use the correct hardware provided in the plastic bags labeled for each step in the assembly, you wont have a problem. the only part that was a little irritating to me was the fact that you have to keep referring to previous pages to figure out the hardware needed for a particular step in the process. kind of like a government regulation book where they keep having you refer to different pages to get the full intention of the rule. In my opinion, if you are going to attempt to take this project on? Make sure you have the proper tools and skill level to take on a somewhat complex assembly project.The beauty of this portable hoop is, it's very sturdy when weighted properly with sand bags or water (I prefer sand bags) and it is very adjustable for height, the manual states 7'6" for its lowest position but when lowered all the way it gets down to just an inch or two over 7 feet. My 6 year old son loves it and I find myself out there often with him shooting hoops and enjoying his company.