Stephon Marbury to Transform Old Toys R Us into Indoor Sports Complex

The old Toys “R” Us on Flatbush Avenue has been dark for years, a hollowed-out reminder of a childhood era that packed up and left with the chain’s U.S. shutdown in 2018. Now, one of Brooklyn’s most recognizable vacant boxes is set for a very different kind of play.

Stephon Marbury is coming home.

The former New York Knicks point guard and Coney Island native is teaming up with Wellball to transform the sprawling, abandoned storefront into a permanent indoor sports complex. Where toy aisles once ran, there will be courts: pickleball, other paddle sports, flag football, and, at the heart of it, Wellball—a stripped-down, shot-obsessed twist on basketball.

The Flatbush site is expected to become Wellball’s Brooklyn flagship. No opening date is on the board yet, but the plan is clear: turn a dead retail shell into a humming recreation hub for southern Brooklyn.

Wellball sells itself with a bold tagline: “the pickleball of basketball.”

The comparison fits. The game is built for quick hits of competition, simple rules, and broad appeal. Two players face off in head-to-head shooting battles, aiming over “The Well,” a device mounted on the rim that funnels and frames the action.

No dribbling. No defense. No full-court sprints.

Just shooting.

The design flips the usual basketball hierarchy. Height, strength, and end-to-end speed fade into the background. Accuracy becomes the currency. Short rounds keep games brisk and accessible, opening the door to players of different ages, sizes, and skill levels who want to compete without grinding through a traditional five-on-five run.

“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 man behind the concept is Omar Wellington, a former Division I player at Sacred Heart University who built his post-playing career as a trainer. His client list stretches from youth hopefuls to NBA names, including Rick and Jalen Brunson. From that world of player development came a new game built almost entirely around the shot.

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, pushing the idea that there’s room in the basketball universe for a format that isolates the purest act in the game: putting the ball through the hoop.

For Brooklyn, the project is about more than a new game. It’s about reclaiming a cavernous, empty building and turning it into a year-round indoor playground in a part of the borough that knows basketball culture as well as any place in the country.

For Marbury, it’s something deeper.

The two-time NBA All-Star grew up in Coney Island, starred at Abraham Lincoln High School, and carried the weight of local expectation long before he ever pulled on a Knicks jersey from 2004 to 2009. Now “Starbury” is set to plant a different kind of footprint back on home turf—this time as a builder, not just a scorer.

The toys are gone. The courts are coming. And in a Brooklyn building that once sold childhood dreams in cardboard boxes, Marbury is betting that a new kind of game can bring the crowds back through the doors.