2003 / Sports / Basketball

The LEGO Basketball subtheme of Sports that ran from 2003 to 2005. In the first year, 2003, sets were licensed by the NBA and were based on real games, court games, and simple street games. The minifigures in this theme had spring-loaded legs and specially designed hands so players can shoot, pass and even reverse slam dunk. These minifigures also featured more realistic skin tones, being based on real-life NBA players from real teams.

2003 LEGO Sets

While 2003 proved to be a financial disaster for LEGO we did see a number of signification events that set the tone for future LEGO recovery and investments. Most important, LEGO introduced new realistic minifigure skin tones that affected licensed themes including Star Wars, Harry Potter, Basketball, Ferrari and Spider-Man, but kept yellow skin tones for all other minifigures. In 2003, the LEGO minifigure celebrated its 25th birthday with just under four billion minifigures being produced. LEGO that year introduced a number of new themes including Clikits, Designer, Sports which consisted of hokey, basketball and Gravity Games, World City and 4 Juniors which replaced the Jack Stone theme.