Back in 2002, a new basketball league popped up and spent two years compelling fans as it mixed hoops, football, and trampolines. SlamBall aired on Spike TV (this is an incredible Of Its Era sequence of words) and put a twist on the game that was awfully familiar to anyone who had a friend with a trampoline and a basketball hoop that could be moved to the backyard.
There have been plenty of calls over the years for SlamBall to come back in some form or fashion, and in a recent interview with TMZ, SlamBall founder Mason Gordon revealed that it will make its return in the summer of 2023.
“We’ve gotten opportunities,” Gordon said. “Pretty much every couple of months, there will be an opportunity to bring SlamBall back in some form. And my partners and I have always looked at it and said, ‘We’re not gonna come back until the market conditions are, like, really optimal,’ and the alternate sports marketplace is on fire. And there’s a reason for that: Younger audiences are really out there looking for, like, what sport can I call my own, because a lot of them aren’t watching two and a half hour, three-hour long broadcasts anymore.
“SlamBall just kind of fits the bill,” he continued. “They’re 20-minute games, television half hours. People always really gravitated to the action, and it’s this incredible mash-up between basketball, football, hockey, little bit of gymnastics, little bit of video games. That’s just SlamBall, you get a whole lot in one neat, tidy little package.”
The original SlamBall league, the one that was on Spike, featured six teams during its first season and expanded to eight in its second. There have been additional attempts beyond that to have SlamBall in some form or fashion, and all of us at Dime are excited to see how this one will turn out. And now, here is a SlamBall dunk compilation I found on YouTube:
