An Uphill Battle Over Basketball Courts : Recreation: Laura Phillips’ effort to correct a steep incline on the playing surface at Westwood Park went nowhere until she got a councilman on her team.

The case of Westwood Park’s curiously sloping basketball courts has been solved with the aid of a pen, a phone, a councilman and one determined lady.

“I’m glad that the city officials finally paid attention when the public called to let them know something was wrong,” says Laura Phillips, who led a wrangle that pitted residents who live near the park against the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks.

Last year, shortly after a construction crew hired by the city began building the courts, Phillips noticed that the courts appeared to be sloping quite a bit.

“It looked like it was built on a hill,” she said. “It was rolling downward. You could have sledded down it if it was covered in snow. I would take people over to the park and they would laugh.”

When she tried to draw what she thought was a costly mistake to the attention of city officials, she hit a brick wall.

Phillips said the ruckus over the sloping courts--which got rolling last November--wasn’t about dribbling uphill, but “about how business is done.”

Phillips called and sent letters to park officials and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky to alert them to the situation. When she got no response, she sent copies of her letters to The Times.

It was about then that Yaroslavsky and Jackie Tatum, general manager of the Department of Recreation and Parks, tromped off to the park to take a firsthand look at the courts, Phillips says. Their verdict: Phillips was on to something. The courts were sloping too much. They had to be redone.

“The day I went out it was raining and the damn thing was so steeply sloped, water was flowing like a river down it,” said Yaroslavsky. “You’d have to have one leg shorter than the other to have a fighting chance on those courts,” which were built on a 2% slope.

Yaroslavsky, who credits Phillips for uncovering the mistake, had the courts redone. The original concrete courts were covered in asphalt to bring them to 1% slope. The changes took about three weeks. The cost is unclear.

But “now people can play basketball without ruining their hips,” Yaroslavsky said.

“It was goofy. But they fixed it,” says Jeffrey Bell, a resident who plays on the courts semi-regularly. “It still looks a little weird, but it’s fine. You can play.”

But Frank Catania, director of planning and development for the recreation department, thinks the changes were unnecessary.

“Every basketball court built outdoors slopes,” says Catania. “If it doesn’t, it contains water. The courts were built at the same grade we had been using for years.”

Richard Klink, project manager for the Westwood courts, agrees. Other city parks have courts built on a 2% slope, he said, and “we’ve never gotten complaints before. . . . I think it was much ado about nothing.”

Yaroslavsky said he thinks the city should look into changing the guidelines for building basketball courts.

But the Westwood courts had a happy ending. A ceremony to dedicate them was held Saturday.

The ceremony was supposed to be on the basketball courts, but as fate would have it, rain forced the event indoors.

The rain may have put a damper on the ceremony, but the courts handled the weather just fine. Joan Skirvin, senior recreation director for the complex, said, “There was excellent drainage.”