Where to put a basketball hoop in your driveway: edge, overhang, garage door and street

The five placement rules

1. The board over pavement. A bank shot has to land on glass that is over the slab; a board over the lawn is a board you cannot use from that side. Size the board to the width where the pole stands: 54 for one car, 60 for two.
2. The pole at the edge. An in-ground pole belongs just off the driveway (the Silverback manual: “as close to the court without making contact”), with Goalrilla recommending an expansion joint if the footing and a new slab are poured together. A portable's base sits on the slab, so the playable depth loses 4 to 5 feet.
3. Clearance behind the pole. The SB60 manual requires an 18-inch minimum behind the pole; that is the crank, the yard-guard fold, and your own shoulders during install.
4. Out of the garage door's path. The board and rim cannot be in the arc of the door or the path of the car; beside the door is the usual answer.
5. The rebound's path away from the street. A hoop at the top of a sloped driveway sends every miss to the road. Face it up the slope where you can; guard it where you cannot.

Measure from the anchor, not the curb

The rim hangs in front of the pole by the overhang: 2 to 4 feet on in-grounds, 18 to 26 inches on portables. The SB60 manual gives the figure to use when siting its anchor: “Overhang when adjusted to 10 ft. = 27” inches, and it wants the anchor located so the backboard lines up with the court. So the anchor plate goes 27 inches behind where you want the front of the backboard, and the pole's own footprint and the 18-inch rear clearance go behind that. On a Goalrilla FT60 the overhang is 3.5 feet; Goalrilla's guide says 2 to 4 feet is the useful range and 5 or more “can compromise performance.” Get the overhang from your hoop's page or manual and mark the rim position on the slab with chalk before you dig. How deep to dig picks up from the mark.

The garage door

The most common driveway layout is the hoop beside the garage, on the edge of the slab, so the board hangs over the driveway next to the door rather than in front of it. That keeps the rim out of the door's swing and out of the car's path, and it puts the playable area in front of the door where the driveway is widest. The cost is that a two-car slab may only offer one car's width in front of the hoop, which is a 54-inch board, not a 60. A hoop centered in front of a closed garage door works if the door is a roll-up that never opens while people play; a swing-out door or a car that parks there rules it out.

The street, the sidewalk, the grass

Street. A hoop set so the backboard faces the street sends misses into traffic and, in many municipalities, a hoop in or over the right-of-way is prohibited; check the local ordinance before siting a pole near the curb. Sidewalk. Mounting a hoop so it overhangs a public sidewalk is the same problem; the pole has to be on your property and the board over your pavement. Grass. A portable on grass sinks, tips and kills the lawn; an in-ground beside the slab is fine, because only the pole is in the grass and the board is over the pavement. That in-ground-beside-the-slab arrangement is the one the manuals describe.

Guarding the rebound

If the geometry sends misses to the street, a yard guard behind the hoop (Goalrilla's is 153 inches wide and 7-9 feet tall; Silverback's is over 10 feet wide and 8 tall) or a return net on the pole catches them. The guards are pole-specific: Goalrilla's fits 5x5 and larger square poles, Silverback's fits 4x4 Silverback and Goaliath poles and explicitly not Goalrilla or the round-pole NXT. Decide the guard when you decide the placement, because it changes which hoop you buy.