Basketball Rims – How to Buy the best Rim for your Basketball Hoop

The basketball rim on a goal might look fairly simple.  After all, it’s just an eighteen inch diameter piece of steel, right?  Actually, this seemingly simple part of the basketball hoop can come in a broad variety of types and styles.  Knowing which one is which can help make you backboard last a lot longer and just generally make playing hoops at your home a lot more fun. 

Single or Double Rim? 

The large majority of rims that you can buy out there are just single rims.  That is, they are made of a single piece of round steel.  But there are some basketball rims made that have two rims welded together for complete durability.  While most players won’t require this extreme degree of stability, have a double rim basketball rim can be extraordinarily helpful if you are buying a basketball goal for institutional purposes. 

Breakaway Rim or Fixed Rim? 

 All basketball rims used to be “fixed,” that is, they were bolted straight onto the backboard.  Since the advent of dunking, however, basketball rims started being bolted to the basketball backboard using high tension springs.  This allows the basketball rim to bend a little bit when pressure is applied to it, thus saving the backboard from stress damage.  Today, fixed basketball rims are only really found on the cheapest of cheap basketball systems. Most of the time, you find rims that use these springs, and the higher you go up in basketball backboard quality, the more heavy duty these springs are. 

Single Direction or 180 Degree Direction Breakaway Rim?

Most breakaway rims “break away” in a single direction.  More advanced rims on higher end, more expensive backboards are sometimes able to bend to the sides as well.  That way, if someone dunks from the side, there is little risk that the backboard will be harmed.

If you have a backboard that doesn’t have a 180 degree breakaway rim, and you are interested in an upgrade, it’s entirely possible to install a new kind of basketball rim on your backboard. Just make sure that the rim that you are buying is produced by the same manufacturer as the backboard and has the same bolt pattern as you old rim. 

What Kind of Net? 

A basketball net is important not just because it give the basketball hoop look, but also because it makes it a lot easier to tell when a goal is scored and helps keep the ball from getting away from you after a basket.  Most basketball hoops already come with a rim attached to the basketball net, but it is usually a pretty cheap nylon net.  A couple upgrades to keep in mind include a heavy duty anti whip basketball net and a metal chain basketball net, if you want to get a real street basketball feel in your