Snake-draft basketball is pretty crazy. As much as double basketball, which, seemingly, is fitting, because that’s what this is.

That line introduced the minifig head top print. I wonder if it's still current, haven't seen that since Power Miners.

Another oddity in this set is the big 1x6x5 brick used for the net's backboard (or whatever you call that) - one side is printed, the other side has the identical pattern as a sticker. I assume enabling double printing for this piece was too expensive at the time.

I also dislike the idea of people assuming the "Sports" theme was introduced in 2000. The 2003 line had quite some differences setting it apart from 2000's "Football". Multiple sub-themes at once, a much more "in-your-face" licensing, different set-types (regular playsets, Bionicle-esque figures and the collector figures) and a rather weird unique style for minifig faces...
Also it seemed to have had a far greater marketing budget including promo CDs and such, almost as if it was intended to replace Drome Racers (which had a similar marketing approach).

Ugh, those heads were just all kinds of wrong. In particular, they were the kind of wrong that should have made a product manager run down the hallway screaming "No, no, don't ship it!"

The soccer system was a lot of fun to play with. I've never gotten to play with the basketball system though. I always kind of doubted it would work as well. Anybody have any experience?

...as I said yesterday, I liked 3427 more because of the little set dressing. This set is one of the ones that forego that to focus solely on a play feature. Speaking of that set, I only now notice that red axle. Nice that they used that instead of just black.

Interestingly, that wind-up motor mostly appeared in Sports, but I know it from 4757 the 2004 Hogwarts Castle, where it was used for the gate-pendelum-clock mechanism. In that set it was still dark gray despite the switch to Dark Bluish Gray. All beause it first appeared in 2003 sports sets like this one.
The motor goes quite fast, so I wonder how this set would look in action.

@Lego_lord said:
"I thought this was the same RSOTD, stuck from yesterday. Odds of seeing a set from same theme, let alone same year, must be really, really low. Yet it happened."

And now it's growing, like that old movie, The Blob.

@AllenSmith:
My experience is limited to the large snowboarding set. I was asked to try it out at NYTF, gave the snowboarder a push at the top of the slop, and got a rather shocked reaction from Brian, the marketing guy assigned to give me a tour, when it zipped down the slope and crossed the finish line. Apparently that was the first time he'd seen anyone actually manage to do a clean run.

Wow, yay, another basketball RSOTD. Shocking. Great. Why not?

The spring in the legs allowed for the minifigures in this series to glide and bend around the hoops to drop the ball in without glancing hard off in action, or to allow the child/human to bend them back and gently catapult the ball upward. The minifigure arms were also unique with design meant to hold the ball with gentle clutch power. Mostly they were fun little fidget devices for tabletop play. I'm sure we won't see them ever again with so much specialization.

@Crux said:
"Huwbot, we need to talk."

You'll have to remember that Huwbot only speaks basketball now.

TWO POINTS!

So, Huwbot's moved on from Clickset, and is now promoting Hoopset?