Spalding U-Turn In-Ground Basketball System: Achieve Professional-Level Play at Home

southernguyandgalsouthernguyandgal: I read many reviews on goals before purchasing this one. I am glad to say I am happy with the purchase overall. I am going to break it down in how I did the install in order to prevent some of the frustrations I have read about. I spread this out over a 5 days period. Yeah, that was a bit long but I wanted to get it right. I did every bit of the work by myself except for installation of the backboard. I had to have my wife put the screws in the backboard while I held it up. So here we go.

Day 1 . I dug my hole 2 feet deep and 2 feet square. I live in a very windy area in Texas so I wanted to ensure that the goal would not move. I also built a 2'x2' form to make it look nicer. I also had two 4' pieces of rebar in my shed. I drove those about 2.5 feet in the bottom of the hole to give the goal more stability.

Day 2 - Putting the 2 pole pieces together. I did not find this as hard as most made it out to be. I put chain oil that I put on my garage door on the connection piece before starting. Once I did that I stood on my tail gate, positioned the poles together and started off with a more gentle pounding against a 1/2" piece of ply wood. I think it is important to have...

United States on May 23, 2019

Daniel D. Ayd: A gentleman on Wal-Mart's website was kind enough to put a detailed installer's set of instructions for people to use, like wrapping the pole joint with tape so concrete doesn't leak out and stain the crinkled paint. Cruise to their site and check it out, very helpful stuff! The instructions for this set have very clearly NOT kept up with any design changes over the years. 1st, there are many examples of a picture switching the part reference numbers (switching the washer and nut #'s on page 21). There are multiple references to a middle section of pole but there are only two, so you can't have a top, middle and bottom. The jack support plates have a problem...they are bent inwards to meet the adjustment jack but not far enough on mine. There were extra spacers in the bag that the instructions made no mention of but would have probably prevented the lag bolts from bending the metal on my jack and pole when snugging up the bolts--even bent it still works fine. I'm not exactly sure why the don't make any mention in the instructions that if you live in the frost belt of the United States, you cannot rely on a 24" deep footing to keep your pole plumb for more than a year or two. I...

United States on Jul 03, 2011