The Toronto Raptors home court at Scotiabank Arena will look vastly different on Friday night.
Basketball fans are used to seeing a typical wood-polished court with red accents while watching Raptors home games, but a new Toronto court that is mostly dark grey with a touch of gold was unveiled on Friday morning. The NBA logo appears on the sideline near the scorer’s table, with the team slogan “We The North” on the opposite side.
The fresh look is part of the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament, which got underway this November and will culminate in the final four teams competing for the ultimate championship in Las Vegas next month.
The Raptors are the last team in the league to play their first game of the tournament against the visiting Boston Celtics. Fans will see the same court next Friday when Chicago comes to town, while the team will also play in Orlando and Brooklyn for the opening round of group play.
The Raptors, like every home team in the tournament, will wear their OVO-themed city-edition jerseys.
The NBA took a big swing and introduced the colourful redesigns of the courts for all teams to give the new tournament a look that stands out right away and is distinctive from the regular basketball games.
Aside from different colour choices and words, the design is the same across the league — with the tournament championship trophy appearing at centre court, the team’s logo or name overlaid to it. A vertical lane runs in the middle from one basket to the other, which the NBA said is meant to be a metaphor for a runway to Las Vegas.
Reviews and online reaction from fans across the league have been mixed since the tournament kicked off. Some colours seem a bit too overwhelming for fans to concentrate on the games, such as the bright red paint for the Chicago Bulls and the Philadelphia 76ers courts or the almost-blinding sky blue choice in Oklahoma City.
On the other hand, there appears to be too many teams that chose to go with a grey colour, making it harder for fans to immediately recognize which team is which.
But NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is happy that game attendance, engagement and ratings have been very high during the first few games of tournament.
“I’m a fan of the courts. I’m enjoying all the banter about them,” Silver said Thursday while appearing on Sportsnet’s The Raptors Show. While he likes how distinctive the courts are in this tournament, he admits some of them “may need a little bit of tweaking” when the competition returns next season.
“Even for the players, we thought to make the visual imagery different, whether it’s the courts or the uniforms, that they would get up for those games and that they’d know there’s something special. And from that standpoint, it’s been effective.”
The in-season tournament games take place every Tuesday and Friday throughout November. For the teams that advance past the group play, single elimination games will take place on Dec. 4 and 5. Two games of the semifinals are scheduled on Dec. 7, while the championship game is on Dec. 9.
