In addition to its new name, the NBA Cup has a new look. When the NBA’s second annual in-season tournament, formerly known as the In-Season Tournament, tips off on Tuesday, the games will once again be played on distinctive, fully painted courts, but the designs aren’t the same as last year’s. All 30 of them, designed by artist Victor Solomon, “feature three concentric circles radiating from center court in tonal hues of a core team color,” the league announced Thursday.
The 16-foot-wide runway that went from one lane to the other is gone. Fewer of these color schemes can be accurately described as “bright” or “loud.” The original court vision, however — to make it obvious to viewers that they’re not watching a standard regular-season game — remains exactly the same.
(High-definition looks of all courts are available in this Twitter thread.)
The concentric circles represent the three stages of the tournament: group play, the knockout quarterfinals in team markets, Las Vegas.
“We didn’t want it to be too noisy or too overpowering, sort of learning some lessons from what was working and what wasn’t working last year,” Solomon said, “so we landed on this very simple, but very sort of gestural concentric circle concept, where we took each team’s core colors and then had these three stacked, gradient steps along the way.”
Once that foundation was set, teams got involved. Christopher Arena, the NBA’s head of on-court and brand partnerships, led a summit with all 30 teams’ creative directors, who collaborated with Solomon on what he called the “storytelling layer.” Underneath the team logo and the NBA Cup trophy at center court and the silhouettes of trophies in the lanes, all of which were present in Year 1, there is something new: a logo, wordmark or graphic. The Indiana Pacers went with “BOOM BABY!” in enormous italics. The Charlotte Hornets went with a honeycomb pattern. They are all framed at 30% opacity.
The courts are “supposed to be evocative,” Solomon said. “And they’re supposed to be eye-catching.”
In the inaugural tournament, the designs were linked to teams’ City Edition uniforms, which home teams wore throughout (and can be any color). This time around, home teams will wear their Statement Edition uniforms and road teams will wear their white Association Edition uniforms. The NBA Cup courts contrast with the home teams’ uniforms; the Philadelphia 76ers, for example, will wear red uniforms on a blue court.
Arena said that the Statement Edition uniforms are meant to reinforce teams’ core brands, “so that’s why you’re seeing more core colors on these courts. And let the design show through, whether it’s the concentric circles or the signature that the team put on top of it. Let that be the bold and the dynamic element versus crazy colors that are one-and-done City Edition colors.”
The NBA Cup will begin on Nov. 12. Group play will consist of seven “Cup Nights,” all on Tuesdays and Fridays. That stage will end on Dec. 3, and then eight teams — the group winners and a wild card from each conference — will advance to the quarterfinals, which will be played on Dec. 10 and 11. Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena will host the semifinals on Dec. 14 and the championship game on Dec. 17.
More notes on the new courts:
- There are other symbolic references in the court design, according to Solomon. One is that the concentric circles resemble a spotlight. Another is “ascension,” he said. The three tiers can be seen to represent a champion’s journey to the top and players literally stepping onto a riser to be awarded the Cup.
- In contrast to last season, the NBA “had time on our side,” Arena said. He said that this would “absolutely” make it less likely that there will be any manufacturing issues like the one that prevented the Dallas Mavericks from using their tournament court last year.
- Every court is brand new. Robbins made the floors, Bona supplied the paint and Praters Flooring did the finishing. “We’ll continue to use these floors for the next four or five years as we sand and repaint and sand and repaint and change the designs,” Arena said.
- As soon as last season’s tournament ended, Arena started thinking about how to “double down,” he said. When the league approached Solomon, he didn’t need much, um, courting. He had already been working with the NBA for years on its trophies, including the NBA Cup itself. “I was such a huge fan of how the In-Season Tournament went initially, and the sort of visceral reaction of, you know, if I’m out at a bar and I look up at a screen and can tell from a mile away that this is a little bit different and unique from a regular-season game,” Solomon said. “So being able to contribute to the platform of the sport for this new tradition was a real honor.”
- Since every Statement Edition uniform has the Jordan Brand “Jumpman” logo on the right shoulder and left leg, Michael Jordan will effectively be omnipresent at the NBA Cup. “There’s nobody more competitive than Michael Jordan,” Arena said. “This is a competitive tournament.”
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