Where can I play open gym basketball in Atlanta?

The short version

"Open gym" means a gym opens its floor with no team, no registration and no league — you show up, you get in a run. In metro Atlanta the problem is almost never that open gym doesn't exist. It's that most of the places running it never put the schedule on a website, so the only way to find out is a phone call.

We publish more than a thousand indoor gyms across Georgia. Fewer than thirty of them publish an open gym time. Those are listed below, grouped by what they cost, with the venue's own caveats carried through — because "open play is not guaranteed" is a sentence several cities print themselves, and it means what it says.

Free

• Briarwood Park & Community Center and Lynwood Park & Community Center, Brookhaven. The city runs Youth Basketball Drop-In, Adult Basketball Drop-In and Adult Basketball Open Runs at both, free. Times live on each center's monthly calendar rather than as a fixed weekly slot, so check the current month.
• Acworth Community Center. Free drop-in on two high-school-regulation courts. Make an account and check in at the front desk. The city says open-play times shift each quarter with programming.

Under $5

• Custer Park Sports & Fitness Center, Marietta. The cheapest adult open gym we have found in the metro: $2 per visit for ages 19 and up, $1 for 18 and under, or $50 a year for unlimited open play if you live in Cobb County. The open play gym runs during building hours — Mon–Fri 5:30am–9pm, Sat 8am–8pm, Sun 1–7pm — but basketball shares the floor with volleyball and badminton, and court time moves with programming. The city also runs a women's 5v5 drop-in, 21 and up, Tuesdays and Thursdays 7–9pm, $2 a day, capped at 30 players first come first served.
• The six Gwinnett County gyms — Bogan Park in Buford, Rhodes Jordan Park in Lawrenceville, Best Friend Park and Lucky Shoals Park in Norcross, Lenora Park in Snellville and George Pierce Park in Suwanee. Gwinnett is the one county in the metro that publishes a countywide drop-in rate: $2.25 for adults 18–49, $1.25 for under-18s and seniors, plus $2 if you live outside the county. Open gym runs during operating hours, but the county says times vary by day and by facility — call the specific gym.
• Kedron Fieldhouse, Peachtree City. $3 for residents, $10 for everyone else, and you need a CivicRec account and a physical photo ID. Open gym follows the posted weekly calendar, not building hours.
• Bill Johnson Community Activity Building, Roswell. Open play Tuesday and Thursday 6–7:30pm and Saturday 10am–4:30pm. $4 residents, $6 non-residents, cash only. Roswell says open play is not guaranteed.

$5 and up

• Decatur's three rec centers are the best-documented open gym in the metro, and the only ones in the region that publish real weekly times. Ebster Recreation Center: adult open gym Tuesdays and Thursdays 10am–2pm, Saturdays 10am–1pm, Sundays 3–5:45pm. Oakhurst Recreation Center: Thursdays 7–9pm, Saturdays noon–2pm, Sundays 3–6pm. Decatur Recreation Center runs open gym too but doesn't publish the hours. All three: $5 a visit for City of Decatur residents, $10 for non-residents, or $25 a month ($50 non-resident) for unlimited access to all three.
• BRXND Sportsplex, Atlanta. Sunday open runs, $10 a session. The venue doesn't publish a start time — call.
• Berean Christian Church, Stone Mountain. A regulation court with six goals, open Monday–Friday 7am–8pm, closed weekends. Access is by membership: $15 a month for adults 18–54, $10 registration.
• Kennesaw Recreation Center. Three full-size courts with monthly open play, behind a paid annual membership. Hours vary with programming and the city publishes no fixed basketball schedule — 678-385-0165.

Where open gym exists but the time doesn't

Two Roswell centers publish a basketball open-play schedule as a separate PDF and warn it isn't guaranteed: East Roswell (770-594-6134) and Hembree Park, which lists Mondays and Wednesdays 10am–8pm (770-569-9746). Cobb County's Fullers, Milford and Fair Oaks centers in Marietta all have gyms, and Cobb publishes a fee schedule rather than free admission — the recreation program manager is on 770-528-8845.

One church gym in the metro is simply open to the public: Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta opens its Activities Center gym Monday–Friday 9am–6pm and Saturday 9am–2pm, with hours varying around ministry events.

The City of Atlanta gap, stated plainly

The City of Atlanta runs 31 recreation centers and publishes operating hours for all of them. It publishes no basketball open gym schedule for any of them, and no admission rate. If you want to play inside the city limits, the building hours tell you when the door is unlocked, not when the court is free; Central Reservations is 404-546-6757. That is the single biggest hole in open gym information in this metro, and it is why the honest answer to "where can I play open gym in Atlanta" so often points to Decatur, Brookhaven, Marietta and Gwinnett instead.

Every price, day and time above comes from the city, county or venue that publishes it, and we date what we read. Where we don't know, the court's own page says so rather than guessing.