Two renovated outdoor 3×3 basketball courts have been launched at Alexandra Park in Portsmouth, creating another site for the city’s community basketball activity and Chain Net Apparel CIC’s youth-focused programme.
Basketball England reported that the courts, in the Hilsea area of Portsmouth, had already hosted a summer of play after their completion. The project was completed through work involving Chain Net founder Craig Hughes, Portsmouth City Council, Mountjoy, local artists and Basketball England.
The development provides an outdoor setting for 3×3 basketball, which Chain Net founder Craig Hughes has made a central part of the organisation’s local work. Hughes, who is also head basketball coach and lecturer at City of Portsmouth College Sports Academy, said the aim was to give younger players more regular opportunities to play and develop in that version of the game.
A redesigned site for outdoor basketball
According to Basketball England, the Alexandra Park courts were reshaped to allow for new fencing, walkways and two entry points. The changes were intended to improve both safety and accessibility. Hughes said the area had previously been more secluded within the park.
Basketball England and Project Swish helped provide new posts, backboards and hoops. Local volunteer parents and players then painted the court surfaces in pink and blue, while artists Seekers Create, Artform, Spike, Alice Rose and Bal contributed murals around the site.
Hughes said the simpler block-colour design had been chosen partly to make ongoing maintenance more manageable than at Orchard Park, another Portsmouth court project in which Chain Net had been involved five years earlier. He said retaining the colour specifications should make it easier to keep the playing surface looking fresh.
He also told Basketball England that the renewed courts had changed how the immediate space was being used. Hughes said basketball players were now making greater use of the area, while the project had also addressed walls that had been heavily affected by graffiti through artwork designed to complement the courts.
The location adds basketball provision to an area Hughes described as Portsmouth’s sports ward. Basketball England noted that Hilsea also includes the Mountbatten Leisure Centre, a running track, bowls clubs and indoor facilities for gymnastics and tennis. Portsmouth FC Basketball Club played home games at the leisure centre during the 1980s, according to the governing body.
3×3 programme has a youth focus
Chain Net began in 2018 as a basketball clothing and merchandise brand before becoming a community interest company in 2022. Basketball England reported that money made by the organisation is directed back into improving the local basketball scene.
Hughes’s focus on 3×3 developed after a trip to Poland with a Solent University team for a tournament. He said watching matches outside his own team’s fixtures had shown him the distinctive environment the format could create.
That interest now feeds into camps, tournaments and regular weekly sessions for players aged from 11 to 18. Hughes runs additional activity during breaks around the National Basketball League calendar, including Christmas, Easter and summer periods. Hughes said the principles, tactics and strength-and-conditioning demands of 3×3 differ from 5v5 basketball.
Basketball England said London 3×3 player Ashley Hamilton recently attended one of the Portsmouth camps and brought his Glasgow 2026 gold medal. Hughes said the visit had allowed young players to meet an elite English 3×3 athlete and consider where involvement in the format might lead.
Hughes saw the project as part of creating consistent opportunities for young people to play 3×3. He said his immediate satisfaction came from staging tournaments and introducing more young people to 3×3, while he also hoped eventually to connect the local scene and help players enter major UK events.
He has additionally identified an abandoned tennis court in Alexandra Park as a possible location for three or four further 3×3 courts. Basketball England presented that as Hughes’s longer-term idea, not as an approved expansion plan. For now, the two completed courts have been launched back to the public.