From The Hardwood To The Pickleball Court, Hansbrough Bros. Are Gearing Up For Nationals

By Alex Abrams
Red Line Editorial

Tyler and Ben Hansbrough haven’t lost their competitive nature just because they’re no longer battling in the paint and diving onto the basketball court for a loose ball.

Around a year ago, the Hansbrough brothers decided to start playing pickleball. The way Tyler tells it, those first few matches against his brother, his brother’s wife and her sister turned into “battles” that got him hooked on the sport.

And then there have been those epic matches between Tyler and Ben, both former college basketball stars who went on to the NBA, that got so heated that a pickleball paddle and a few disparaging words were thrown around afterward.

“Now that we’re 35 and 37, we have to make sure the temperature in the room doesn’t go up too high,” said Ben, who’s the younger of the two brothers. “And we’ve had that a couple of times, but we’ve grown from it. We’re both very competitive people, and it’s always been like that. But it’s been a lot of fun playing together as well.”

The Hansbrough brothers have gone from dominating on the basketball court to starting from scratch on the pickleball court. It has been a fun learning experience for the former NBA teammates who are now looking to rise through the ranks as amateur pickleball players.

“It’s probably not as physically demanding as basketball for me because I’m not having to box out or bang against a 7-foot, 300-pound guy, but pickleball has its own challenges, mentally,” said Tyler, who’s 6-foot-9.

Now more than a decade after they were teammates on the Indiana Pacers, Tyler and Ben are preparing to compete as doubles partners at the 2023 Biofreeze USA Pickleball National Championships powered by Invited and the PPA Tour, which runs from Nov. 5-12 in Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas.

They’ll be among several recognizable amateur players who are scheduled to compete at Nationals, including another former NBA player in Hall of Famer Rick Barry.

In late August, Tyler was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. The 2007-08 National Player of the Year, he’s considered one of the greatest players in college basketball history, earning the nickname “Psycho T” as he led the University of North Carolina to a national championship in 2009.

The Pacers selected Tyler with the No. 13 pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. Three years later, Ben joined his brother in Indiana when he signed with the Pacers after being named the Big East Player of the Year as a 6-foot-3 guard at Notre Dame.

After seven seasons in the NBA and then playing more overseas, Tyler needed a new sport to turn his attention to after stepping away from basketball.

When he started playing pickleball, Tyler admitted he sometimes made the mistake of underestimating an opponent who didn’t look as athletic as him. His opponent would then end up making Tyler look “like a baby giraffe” as he stumbled around the court, chasing after shots.

After that, Tyler said he got serious about developing his skills as a pickleball player. He started attending pickleball camps with Ben, including one camp where they met professional pickleball player Jenna Hessert.

Hessert began working with the Hansbroughs, teaching them different strategies to utilize during a match. She’d also break down footage of them playing to let them know which aspects of their game they needed to improve on.

“Initially, when I started playing and just having fun, I didn’t know much about a drop shot or my dinking wasn’t as good,” Tyler said. “And then when I started competing and playing competitively, I was like, ‘Hey, I have to get really good at dinking and I’ve got to get really good at these drop shots.’

“It’s a pretty easy sport to pick up, but to master it and advance and get a lot better, that’s where it becomes to me a challenge.”

Tyler has become so addicted to pickleball that he tries to play every day. If he can’t get in a match for some reason, he has a Dink Pad at home that he can use to practice his shots.

Tyler said he has learned to limit how much time he spends playing pickleball. He found he’d wake up the day after playing pickleball for hours and his body would be sore when he got out of bed.

“I’ve tried to cut it back,” Tyler said. “When I go to the court, I try to keep everything under 90 minutes or two hours because my body’s already taken a lot of damage from playing basketball, and the pickleball court isn’t the most forgiving surface. So you got to take care of the body, too.”

Ben also tries to play pickleball every day. 

He said a pickleball match doesn’t take nearly as much of a toll on his body as a basketball game used to for him. That’s because, he said, pickleball involves more straight-on movements and sliding instead of twisting and turning like in basketball.

But the Hansbrough brothers bring the same amount of game-planning to a pickleball match as they did to a basketball game — and of course the same intensity.

“If we have a tournament coming up, usually a month before we try to drill every day together and watch videos,” Ben said. “We actually have a coach that helps us out sometimes, too, so we are always trying to prepare well and be ready going into it.

“The (same level of) preparation for basketball comes with pickleball, too, which is kind of funny to say, but it’s the truth.”

Alex Abrams has written about Olympic sports for more than 15 years, including as a reporter for major newspapers in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He is a freelance contributor to USA Pickleball on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.