Stephon Marbury Transforms Old Toys ‘R’ Us into Wellball Sports Complex

The Toys “R” Us sign has long gone dark on Flatbush Avenue, its aisles of plastic dreams collecting dust since 2018. Now, that cavernous Brooklyn storefront is being lined up for a very different kind of play.

Stephon Marbury is coming home—and he’s bringing a new game with him.

The former New York Knicks point guard and Coney Island native is working with Wellball to transform the old, abandoned big-box space into a permanent indoor sports complex. Where shopping carts once rattled, there will be courts: pickleball and other paddle sports, flag football, and, at the heart of it, Wellball—a stripped-down, shooting-obsessed twist on basketball that aims to be as addictive as it is accessible.

The venue is set to become Wellball’s Brooklyn flagship. There’s no opening date on the board yet, but the stakes for the neighborhood are obvious. The project would finally revive a building that has sat empty for years and hand southern Brooklyn a major, year-round recreation hub.

Wellball: A New Game

At the center of it all is the sport Marbury has thrown his weight behind.

Marketed as “the pickleball of basketball,” Wellball ditches much of what fans associate with the traditional game. There is no dribbling. No defense. No end-to-end sprints. Players square off in head-to-head shooting duels, firing over “The Well,” a device mounted on the rim that shapes the flow of each possession and keeps the action trained on pure shot-making.

It’s basketball boiled down to its most universal impulse.

“Everybody wants to shoot,” Marbury said in an interview with Scoop B, laying out the appeal. He called Wellball “the next… the next wave of how people are able to compete and still do something that they love to do.”

The design is deliberate. With dribbling and physical defense stripped away, the game opens its doors to a wider range of bodies and backgrounds. Height and top-end speed take a back seat to touch, timing and accuracy. Games move quickly, with short rounds designed to keep players engaged and the courts constantly turning over.

The concept comes from Omar Wellington, a former Division I guard at Sacred Heart University who shifted from college basketball to player development. His client list has stretched from youth hopefuls to NBA names, including Rick and Jalen Brunson, and that training background seeps into Wellball’s DNA: repetition, rhythm, and shooting under pressure.

Marbury hasn’t just lent his name. He has captained in Wellball’s VIP league and emerged as one of the sport’s loudest advocates, a high-profile bridge between the street, the pros and this new, hybrid form of competition.

For him, the Flatbush Avenue project is more than a business play. It’s a loop closing.

Marbury grew up in Coney Island, starred at Abraham Lincoln High School, then carried the weight of the city’s expectations into the NBA and, eventually, to the Knicks from 2004 to 2009. His “Starbury” persona became part of New York’s basketball mythology—brilliant, complicated, unmistakably local.

Now he’s back in the borough where it all started, helping turn an empty retail shell into a place where the next generation can test their range, chase a game, or simply fall in love with putting the ball through the hoop.

The toys are gone. The shots are coming.