Morehead State Triples the Ante on Large Logos

Regular readers of this blog know of my distaste for the extremely large logos that appear at center-court of many basketball floors. Thanks to my usual sources, I have learned that Morehead State, which used to have a fairly plain court, has now adopted a design that has not one, but three giant logos. As shown here, there's a huge eagle head facing forward at center-court, plus an enormous "M" inside the three-point arc at each end of the court. The yellow rectangles in the photo appear to be stencils for painting, as the out-of-bounds area is solid blue with yellow lettering in this video.

Brief Items -- November 2015

Via Uni-Watch, the Golden State Warriors will use a modified center-court design (this instead of this) when they wear "The CITY" throwback uniforms, to synchronize the court with the jersey... Via Matt Rachmiel and Uni-Watch, the University of Missouri-Kansas City is the latest team to include a city skyline motif on its court...

Milwaukee Bucks First to Feature Alternate Court

Alternate uniforms are a pretty well-established feature of contemporary sports. A franchise with team colors of red, black, and white, for example, might typically wear red jerseys at home and white jerseys on the road (or vice-versa, depending on the sport), but occasionally break out black alternate jerseys.

The Milwaukee Bucks have just announced that, to go along with a set of alternate unis at home, the team will use an alternate court (link). This is what the usual home floor will look like.

Nuggets Embed Pick-Axes and Mountain Range

Via Uni-Watch and Matt Rachmiel, the Denver Nuggets will use wood/shellac shading to embed pick-axes and a mountain range into their new court. Here's a look.

Funky Outdoor Court

Via Uni-Watch, a fashion-designer has created a multi-color, collage-type outdoor basketball court in Paris.

History of Phoenix Suns' Courts

Via Matt Rachmiel, Uni-Watch links to an article that shows not only the Phoenix Suns' new court design, but also a history of floor designs for the Suns franchise. Here's the link.

Athlon 2015-16 Preview Magazine Features "Courts Gone Wild"

With the upcoming college-basketball season roughly two months away, the annual preview magazines are hitting the newsstands. One publisher, Athlon Sports, has a feature in its magazine entitled "Courts Gone Wild." The article is accompanied by photographs of several of the game's gaudiest courts. Two that I wasn't aware of are Manhattan's nearly all-green floor and Oakland's (Michigan) "blacktop" court featuring a growling grizzly in the center. Oakland's court is somewhat reminiscent of Northern Illinois's and Central Florida's.

A theme running through the article is how vivid court designs that are unique to a particular university can serve as 94- X 50-foot advertisements for a school -- yet another way to monetize the game of college basketball. Oregon's court, which the article describes as the view one would have waking up in a sleeping bag in the forest, is probably the best example. Commercial advertisements may also become more common on court surfaces, as large decals that aren't slippery to the players have been developed.

UPDATE (9/9/15): Here's another college floor, from Arkansas-Monticello, that would have been at home with the other "wild" courts (via Matt Rachmiel and Uni-Watch).

Maryland's Wild Design

Via Uni-Watch, Maryland has a new design. The playing area itself is conventional, but the out-of-bounds area is pretty wild.

Northern Colorado Simplifies Court Design

Via Matt Rachmiel and Uni Watch (via Ryan Pfeifer), Northern Colorado is getting a new floor. The new design features very little paint at all, with empty keys, empty areas inside the three-point arcs, and a mid-court Bear logo with only the outline painted. The school previously had a much busier floor.

Pan American Games -- Toronto

Above is a screen-capture of the basketball court-design for the Pan American Games, currently taking place in Toronto. There's a thick yellow ring around the main logo -- perhaps meant to depict a gold medal -- that I could do without. Other than that, I think it's a nice design. PASO stands for Pan American Sports Organization, whereas ODEPA represents the organization's name in Portuguese (the official language of next year's Olympic host, Brazil), the Organização Desportiva Pan-Americana.

Recent Visit to Purdue's Mackey Arena

I recently passed through Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and naturally I had to go by the Boilermakers' basketball facility, Mackey Arena. The building was open so I went in and took the following picture of the court (on which you can click to enlarge).

As it turns out, Purdue has made some modest changes to the floor design for next season. We don't usually cover arena exteriors on this blog, but Mackey's golden roof is worth displaying...

Georgetown Court-Design Contest

Via Uni-Watch, Georgetown University has been holding a contest to re-design its basketball court. Members of the public were invited to submit designs, with the deadline two days ago (May 31). The Georgetown athletics website shows 43 submissions. I can't say that I find any of them superb. You can click on each of the thumbnail versions to enlarge them. If you look at Design 26 (in the seventh row, second one from the left), you'll see that it features larger-than-life images of former coach John Thompson signaling a play to his team. Some of the submissions feature images of Washington, DC landmarks and monuments, but nearby George Washington University already has such a design.

NCAA Women's Final Four Court in Tampa, FL

The women's Final Four is underway and, as usual, the women's court has a more adventurous design than the men's (which is not a tough standard to beat). Whether or not an intentional reference to the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, the court's main feature is a depiction of rays of the sun, emanating from center-court in different shades of shellac. There are also palm-tree leaves painted in the corners. A third unique feature involves purple boxes in the keys, like rubber-stamp designs, saying "FOUR It All" (these are hard to read, except when there's a backboard-camera view of a free-throw attempt). Here's a photo of the court tweeted by Jeff Spiegel.

ESPN 30-for-30 Shorts Video on Milwaukee Mecca "M" Floor

ESPN's 30-for-30 documentary series has a "Shorts" episode on the Milwaukee Bucks' Mecca "M" floor of the 1970s and '80s. I didn't know of the episode until tonight, when it re-aired. The original air date, I've learned, was July 1, 2014. One thing I learned from the video is that the floor was covered entirely in paint, with no natural wood showing; there were yellowish areas that looked like wood, though. The video, which runs 13:54 in duration, can be viewed here.

Conference Tournaments 2015

The forces of uniformity appear to be advancing. Nearly every conference-tournament court I've seen features the conference logo at center-court.There are some small flourishes here and there, such as the American Athletic Conference's light stars against the blue keys, but not much else.

Anyone noticed anything interesting?

New Illinois Court, Murray State's Unique Keys

I missed this change when it was first announced, but I see from today's Indiana at Illinois game that the Fighting Illini have a new court that includes painted-in orange keys and blue lettering. A schematic of the new court is available here. The previous design, which almost entirely banished the blue, is shown here.

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The Murray State (Kentucky) Racers, seemingly in keeping with their horse-racing theme, have a diamond-based design in the keys, similar to what might appear on jockey silks. Based on this video clip, I've created the following schematic.