Stephon Marbury Transforms Brooklyn Toys 'R' Us into Indoor Sports Complex
The Toys “R” Us sign has long gone dark on Flatbush Avenue, but the cavernous Brooklyn storefront is about to get a very different kind of game.
Stephon Marbury is coming home.
The former New York Knicks point guard and Coney Island native is teaming up with Wellball to transform the long-abandoned space into a sprawling indoor sports complex, turning a relic of big-box retail into a playground for a new generation of competitors.
The plan is ambitious. The massive former toy store will be carved into courts for pickleball and other paddle sports, plus flag football and dedicated space for Wellball itself—a stripped-down, shot-first twist on basketball that trades five-on-five chaos for pure marksmanship.
This isn’t just another gym build-out. The Flatbush site is expected to become Wellball’s Brooklyn flagship, anchoring the brand in one of the city’s most basketball-obsessed boroughs. There’s no opening date on the board yet, but the stakes are clear: revive a building that’s sat empty since Toys “R” Us shuttered its U.S. stores in 2018 and give southern Brooklyn a new indoor hub for year-round play.
Wellball
At the heart of it all is the game Marbury has thrown his weight behind.
Wellball has been dubbed “the pickleball of basketball,” and the comparison fits. Like pickleball, it trims away much of the traditional sport’s complexity and physical grind. Players square off in head-to-head shooting duels, firing over “The Well,” a device mounted to the rim that shapes how each shot and rebound unfolds.
No dribbling. No defense. No full-court sprints.
The ball moves, the shooters rotate, and the entire focus narrows to one thing: making shots.
The design is deliberate. By stripping out contact, speed, and size advantages, Wellball opens the door to players of different ages, body types, and skill levels. Accuracy matters. Touch matters. Quick rounds keep games short and sharp, more like a series of contests than a drawn-out run at the park.
“Everybody wants to shoot,” Marbury said in an interview with Scoop B. “Wellball, I believe will be the next… the next wave of how people are able to compete and still do something that they love to do.”
The sport’s creator, Omar Wellington, knows the traditional game inside out. A former Division I player at Sacred Heart University, he built a career training athletes from youth hopefuls to NBA pros, including Rick and Jalen Brunson. That background helped shape Wellball into something that looks familiar to hoop heads but feels far more accessible to casual players.
Marbury hasn’t just lent his name. He has captained in Wellball’s VIP league and emerged as one of its loudest advocates, a two-time NBA All-Star backing a format that reimagines the very thing that made him famous: putting the ball in the basket.
For Brooklyn, the symbolism is hard to miss.
Marbury grew up in Coney Island, starred at Abraham Lincoln High School, and carried the hopes of the city when he joined the Knicks from 2004 to 2009. Now the same “Starbury” who once packed Madison Square Garden is set to help pack courts a subway ride away, in a building that used to sell toys and will soon sell court time.
The aisles of boxed games and plastic hoops are gone. In their place, Marbury and Wellball are betting that New Yorkers will show up for the real thing.
