Clippers inspire by making basketball more accessible
TARZANA — Every basketball team is, of course, trying to get buckets.
The Clippers are the most invested team I know in giving buckets.
If you’ve shot hoops at a public basketball court anywhere in the city of Los Angeles since 2022, the Clippers’ logo was on the backboard. A ubiquitous reminder of the $10 million donation team owner Steve Ballmer made to the L.A. Parks Foundation for renovations at every one of Los Angeles’ public basketball courts.
Savvy marketing, goodwill for all, or both of the above, you be the judge.
And now you might find yourself at a buddy’s house shooting around and spot the Clippers logo on his hoop, too.
That’s thanks to the team’s “All-Star Homecourt Hoops” project that will have distributed more than 5,600 portable hoops throughout the Los Angeles region – 75 free and fully assembled baskets per day for the 75 days leading up to Sunday’s All-Star Game at the Intuit Dome, by the Clippers’ count.
The idea might score the team some points by association, but, practically speaking, the initiative absolutely accomplishes what it sets out to: Gives kids safe places to play and grows the game.
There’s been deliveries to families who lost their hoops in the Eaton Fire, or who had theirs damaged by the windstorm that preceded it. Assists made to a small charter school in Inglewood and a grandson making the most of a dirt patch on a remote property a major highway away from the closest park.
Memories honored and memories made – including by former Clippers assistant coach Beau Levesque, now a Lakers assistant, who also wrote to his former team and managed to procure a hoop for his family. That’s according to his former boss, Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue, who had to laugh.
And it means we now have 8-year-old Sebastian Lindemann spending his free time swishing baskets on his hoop at the end of his family’s driveway in Tarzana, giving basketball and all its potential benefits another shot.
The kid is a ball of energy, a fun guy, for sure. And he’s money shooting at the 8-foot-high target. Turns out he’s capable – as he proved to himself, his parents and the reporter who swung by to check in – of connecting when the rim is at its full confidence-boosting height of 10 feet, too.
A third-grader at Woodland Hills Elementary, Sebastian is neurodivergent. He’s been diagnosed with ADHD and is an enthusiastic regular at weekly occupational therapy, which is helping strengthen his fine motor skills – sessions that didn’t start until after a bad first experience playing recreational basketball, dad TC Lindemann said.
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Sebastian Lindemann, 8 years old, with his new basketball hoop courtesy of the LA Clippers at his home in Tarzana, CA, on Friday, January 30, 2026. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
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Sebastian Lindemann, 8 years old, with his new basketball hoop courtesy of the LA Clippers at his home in Tarzana, CA, on Friday, January 30, 2026. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Sebastian played basketball for the first time as a 7-year-old in a local youth league, teamed with more experienced kids who were more concerned with winning than giving him the touches needed to improve. About the only time he got to handle the ball, his dad said, was on inbounds play – and even then, Sebastian had to fight for the right to pass it.
Seeing him struggle to keep up with the other kids made his family realize for the first time that he might need occupational therapy, TC said. That was good news.
The bad news was that before that, Sebastian would wind up every game on the bleachers in tears, feeling left out and dejected. And TC – a lifelong lover of hoop and former high school basketball player in Michigan – feared the painful first impression would leave Sebastian hating the game forever. And TC hated that idea.
But then he got the email from the Clippers – the Lindemanns were on a marketing list after going to a Clippers game, taking advantage of a free child’s ticket offered through the rec league – promoting the hoop giveaway.
TC had been weighing whether it would be worth it to buy a basket, whether Sebastian would want to play or if he’d want to completely avoid the activity – but the Clippers’ offer was too good to pass up.
So he sent them a short description of Sebastian and his so-far rocky relationship with basketball (noting that his stats-loving son enjoyed attending his first Clippers’ game, taking to it “like a fish in water,” despite the loud and highly stimulating game-day environment at Intuit Dome).
Not long after he shared their story, TC learned a hoop would be on its way, a few-days-after-Christmas surprise for Sebastian.
“I thought it was a trinket,” said mom Tatyana Bolotina, who had been picturing a hoop like one you would hang on the back of a door indoors – not a model that would retail for at least a couple of hundred dollars at a store. “Oh, you meant an actual giant hoop! Like an actual hoop? That’s really cool.”
The hoop showed up, swaddled in lots and lots of bubble wrap. It was dropped off, fully assembled, by a delivery man who wanted no help bringing the sturdy, practical contraption all the way up from the street to their home.
Sebastian helped TC fill the base of the hoop with water and sand and soon shots were being fired: Now you can find his 11-year-old, volleyball-playing sister, Emma, posted up in the driveway, regularly getting buckets – Sebastian following every time she heads outside to shoot. It is his hoop after all. Count on 5-year-old brother Christian to tag along too.
And we have Emma thinking she’d like to give basketball a go. And, guess what? Sebastian saying he wants to, too.
Because of that hoop at home, he said: “Two things I like about it,” he said. “Cool thing, I like how they colored it.” (It’s a sharp Clipper All-Star-themed red and blue).
“And,” he added, importantly, “it makes me shoot better.”
And that’s a win; that’s the idea – seeing the ball go through the hoop, seeing possibilities open up, seeing that basketball is a game for everyone.
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