A basketball scout named Bernard Bowen Jr. was having a look at a promising ballplayer named Marvin Roberts at the St. John’s Recreation Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in late February. Mr. Roberts, from Bedford-Stuyvesant, had been a leading scorer at Florida International University, where Isiah Thomas, the N.B.A. star and former Knicks coach, recruited him in 2010. But the player from Brooklyn never got his chance at the N.B.A.

Now Mr. Roberts, 29, was training for a different sport — Fightball, a venture that could be described as street basketball waged in a nightclub, complete with a D.J., a bar and a V.I.P. lounge. Fightball seeks to commercialize one-on-one street basketball, the sport’s rawest form, and repurpose its unregulated intensity for the Instagram era.

Contact is encouraged. During a recent match, a player yanked his opponent’s ankle in the middle of a dunk, causing him to slam to the ground as spectators snapped photos with their phones. After shirt tugs and two-handed shoves, the flagrant gesture was finally called a foul. A $100,000 prize awaits the victor of the three-night tournament, which begins with 16 players. Mr. Roberts would be one of them.

A trainer shoved Mr. Roberts about the court with a large exercise ball as he tried making shots. Mr. Bowen sat in the bleachers. The Atlanta rapper Future played from a portable speaker.