Building upon this
Bleacher Report slideshow of hypothetical college-basketball court designs for a variety of teams, including the University of Miami, I would like to offer my own artistic vision for the Hurricanes' court. Probably the phrase most closely associated with Miami athletics is "The U" or "It's all about the U" (
here and
here). These expressions recognize the orange-and-green U that appears on the school's
football helmet, on the current
basketball center-court, and as a
new statue on campus.
It occurred to me that the area in between the three-point arc and the key forms what might be considered a sideways U. I was also, I'm sure, influenced by a former
University of Florida court design, in which the area between the three-point arc and the key was painted blue on one side and orange on the other. The upshot of all this is a design in which the University of Miami "U" fills most of the area between the arc and the key, as shown in the following image.
Note that the bottom of the U is much flatter than the curvature of
the three-point arc. Therefore, the bottom of the U protrudes beyond the
arc. I've used lighter shades of orange and green to illustrate the
parts of the U that are behind the arc. Also, the straight parts of the U
do not completely fill the area between the arc and key; to preserve
the actual proportions of the U, there is some open space along the
lengths of the key. Finally, painting the traditional outline of a circle at the top of the key would entail breaking the continuity of the U. Therefore, I opted for a filled-in circle of lighter wood, which minimally overlaps with the base of the U.
For center-court, I went with the university's
"miami" wordmark. Perhaps some fans of the school would prefer "canes" instead. What do people think?
