For my sons ninth birthday party we had a basketball theme. We used the basketball invites from the party store, along with the basketball plates, napkins and table cloth. When everyone arrived we ate pizza, I also had carrots and grapes and chips set out to munch on later.  Then after they were done with that we got a game of basketball going outside, with the new hoop we got for my sons birthday present (they loved it). While they were outside playing with my husband, I set up the ice cream sundae bar, where they built their own ( which takes up a bit of time) and enjoyed! To get them all settled and ready for presents, we played a game where we sat in a circle and  passed the basketball to the music (like hot potato) and the last one won! They really liked this game too.After presents, we closed it up with the boys' fave game of Nerf. We have two teams start out at their own bases and the goal is to take over the other teams base. We keep this safe by having them wear goggles or glasses. They played this atleast two different times. For our favors we passed out basketball candy (found at the store, on sale from valentines day) also sports themed pencils with cool little pencil toppers that were an atual hoop where you try to get the bball in, and some other candy's, we also found some bball notepads at the party store. Oh and this was pretty cool, I had the tv set on a college bball game that was on that day, and one of the teams made an awesome dunk, that we rewound ( we have dvr) and the boys all cheered, about three different times.