The L.A. Clippers had their 2024-25 home debut on Wednesday night, which was the first regular-season game ever played at the Intuit Dome.
It is a special arena for many reasons, including The Wall, but one of the most underrated features is the way that the stadium has revolutionized the promotional t-shirt.
While other stadiums across professional and collegiate sports have used archaic methodologies of t-shirt giveaways by literally tossing them into the crowd, Intuit Dome has taken the technology into the future with how they’re doing it in Inglewood.
Rather than using cheerleaders and mascots tossing t-shirts into the crowd from the court using either their hands or a cannon, Intuit Dome is using the halo scoreboard.
“The Halo Board also can measure how loud fans are screaming, utilizing a system that can narrow audio level down to a single seat, according to Zucker. And it has T-shirt cannons at the top ready to launch free shirts to fans seated at the top of the arena.”
Every fan in the arena has an equal chance of getting a t-shirt no matter where they are sitting and the video graphics makes it look like the players are throwing it directly to them.
Ballmer clearly made an effort to create a genuinely fun atmosphere at this NBA arena, and he is personally putting in the work to help give his team a home crowd advantage.
While it might not work every time, the efforts are beyond admirable.
The L.A. Clippers have officially moved arenas and will officially play their home games at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood.
After years of sharing a space with the Los Angeles Lakers in downtown, the new basketball arena hosted its first basketball game ever on Monday night. It was just a preseason game but the Clippers defeated the Mavericks, 110-96.
The Clippers continue challenging the common fan experience with their new $2 billion arena
Los Angeles Clippers chairman Steve Ballmer has taken everything he loathes about modern NBA arenas and made it his personal mission to fix the fan experience.
Then the Clippers showed off “The Wall“, 51 uninterrupted rows of seats behind one baseline specifically for Los Angeles fans to taunt opponents. Those tickets can only be resold on the Clippers’ marketplace.
But the latest technological innovation he unveiled on Friday has finally solved one of biggest fan experience gripes in all of sports: The T-Shirt Cannon.
For years, teams have worked to find ways to create a t-shirt toss during timeouts that reaches every corner of the arena and not just the high-priced seats closer to the floor.
All were bandages on a problem that kept creeping back up.
No more! Ballmer has solved it. He’s achieved the sports equivalent of splitting the atom. And it’s all thanks to the new halo video board inside the arena.
The massive band hanging from the top of the Inuit Dome is capable of firing t-shirts to any and every seat in the building. Let me say that again in my most Oprah voice: EVERY SEAT IN THE BUILDING GETS A(n equal chance at a) T-SHIRT.
“It’s unfair. It’s not right,” Steve Ballmer says about the regular t-shirt toss you see at NBA games. So what did the Clippers do? They put t-shirt cannons on the Halo Board that can apparently hit every seat in the arena so no one is left out. No, I’m not kidding! pic.twitter.com/6N5mO9psxa
It’s easy to clown on Ballmer — and the Clippers, in general — but to be honest, it’s silly attention to details like these that really will make all the difference for the paying customer.
Teams aren’t always going to contend to championships, and certainly Clippers fans know that well, but you can always make sure fans have an elite experience when attending a game.
The Clippers’ new home completely raises the bar off the court and it won’t be long before rival teams start trying to catch up.
The Los Angeles Clippers announced the plan to display California high school basketball jerseys in Intuit Dome when it opens in 2024.
The Los Angeles Clippers will finally be getting some jerseys in the rafters.
The team announced this week that they plan to display California high school jerseys from across California in its new stadium, Intuit Dome when it opens this year ahead of next season. The Clippers wrote on their website that the symbol will “honor the state’s rich history of youth basketball” and posted instructions for application.
California has a deep history of prep basketball, with Hall of Fame-caliber NBA players like Reggie Miller, Bill Walton, James Harden, and Jason Kidd coming from the Golden State, and others like Raymond Lewis and Tracy Murray who built lasting legacies solely off high school play. WNBA legends like Lisa Leslie and Diana Taurasi have also hailed from California high schools.
Intuit Dome, in Inglewood about 10 miles away from current home Crypto.com Arena, is what Bloomberg describes as a $2 billion passion project for owner Steve Ballmer. The billionaire told Bloomberg that “We can’t establish a sense of identity” around Crytpo.com arena, which is also home of the Los Angeles Lakers and hockey Los Angeles Kings.
Among chief issues of the team’s place at Crypto, where they moved under former owner Donald Sterling in 1984, is that the Clippers are one of just two teams (Toronto Raptors) who do not have any jerseys retired in a Ring of Honor-like setting. That, along with a dearth of championships, is in stark contrast to the Lakers, whose retired numbers and championship banners the Clippers cover with pictures of active players during games. Ballmer, worth $120 billion, can model this stadium to his vision.
How and where the high school jerseys will be displayed is not yet clear, though it will almost certainly not be in the rafters like a Ring of Honor. The most expensive basketball stadium ever will presumably have plenty of room for other museum-like experiences.
Social media can’t resist the urge to get these “fun guy” jokes off.
Welcome to Layup Lines, our basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every afternoon.
The Los Angeles Clippers hosted a ceremony Tuesday to celebrate the installation of the last steel beam on their future home, the Intuit Dome.
With players in attendance, all eyes were predictably on Kawhi Leonard because of course they were. Everyone is always ready to see the next expressionless face the “fun guy” will make.
But can we leave Leonard alone until then? We don’t have to force every non-thing to be a thing. People are starting to turn his mere existence into a joke.
Steve Ballmer gave us actual good material Tuesday with how fired up he was about toilets. And still, there was no shortage of sports social media accounts posting photos and memes of Leonard doing absolutely nothing, like this or this or even this one.
The dude is literally just chilling. I found more humor in Russell Westbrook showing up to the ceremony for a building he’ll never play in.
As for the Leonard jokes, they’re long past the point of being funny. Let’s all collectively agree to move on to something else.
The Tip-Off
Some NBA goodness from around the USA TODAY Sports network.
Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports
As the Memphis Grizzlies await the return of Ja Morant from his indefinite absence, the team got some good news Wednesday, with the Glendale, Colorado, police department announcing Morant won’t face any criminal charges.
Now, everyone awaits the conclusion of the NBA’s investigation, which could result in a separate punishment for Morant if they find that the gun he flashed on an Instagram Live video was transported via team transportation.
However, if Morant is suspended, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an automatic 50-game ban, as one reporter incorrectly stated. FTW’s Bryan Kalbrosky wrote about there being no precedent for a suspension that long and outlined the punishments for past gun-related infractions.
“The main takeaway here is that if the NBA concludes that Morant had a firearm present at a team facility, like the team plane, Adam Silver has the power to suspend Morant for a definite or indefinite amount of time.
Silver has not handed out any gun-related suspensions. But his predecessor and mentor, former commissioner David Stern, did.”
Cavaliers (-2.5, -105) vs. Heat (+110), O/U 215.5, 7:30 PM ET
I’m looking at an incredibly low total for this game — the lowest of any game Wednesday night — and I’m still inclined to bet the under. These two teams rank in the bottom-three in pace in the NBA, leaving them both in the bottom six in points scored. And their respective defenses are really good. These teams combined for an average of 198 points in their first two games. Take the under.
Shootaround
— Pau Gasol wiped away tears watching his jersey retired next to Kobe’s
Let’s face it, having to use the restrooms at sporting events sucks!
The crowds. The long lines. The dubious cleanliness of the bathrooms themselves. For one reason or another, using the bathroom at a sports arena is hardly an easy task.
Enter the Los Angeles Clippers and their upcoming new arena Intuit Dome. On Tuesday, the media got a first look inside the building, which is currently being constructed in Inglewood, California. During the event, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer made quite the impassioned speech when talking about the higher than average number of toilets Intuit Dome is set to house.
La Clippers owner Steve Ballmer fired up about one of the Intuit Dome’s signature features: “Toilets! 1,160 toilets and urinals! Three times the NBA average! … We do not want people waiting around. We want them back to their d—- seats.” pic.twitter.com/Zphre8ZMRL
That’s a lot of toilets! And on the surface, having over 1,100 toilets — triple the NBA average — should make for an overall better experience for the fans coming to visit.
That being said, the passion with which Ballmer yelled “TOILETS!” is going to stick with me for some time. One day, I hope I can be as excited for something as Ballmer was for the number of toilets in Intuit Dome.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is leading the charge to have his team become more popular in Los Angeles than the Lakers.
Since moving to the City of Angels in 1984, the Los Angeles Clippers have seriously lagged behind the Los Angeles Lakers in terms of popularity.
It’s no wonder why, as the Lakers have won a boatload of NBA championships, while the Clippers have reached the Western Conference Finals only once.
Until a decade ago, the Clippers had been a laughingstock, but the arrivals of Blake Griffin and Chris Paul changed that.
Now, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George are looking to turn the Southland into a Clippers metropolis.
At least that’s what Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is hoping for.
Second part of SportsCenter interview with Steve Ballmer on what the Intuit Dome means for the Clippers in Los Angeles and eventually not having to share an arena with the Lakers: “I think it’s another statement that says, ‘Hey look, we're nobody’s little brother.’” pic.twitter.com/IcWo1LzvID
“You said this is Laker town. No. Laker-Clipper. And someday, I want to be able to say Clipper-Laker.”
The Clippers have made some key additions in recent months, such as 3-and-D forward Robert Covington, scoring guard Norman Powell and former All-Star point guard John Wall.
With Leonard making his way back from a knee injury he suffered in the 2021 playoffs, most agree the Clippers will be title contenders once again this coming season.
The fact that they will soon have their own arena in Inglewood is part of Ballmer’s effort to bring them out of the Lakers’ imposing shadow.
The Lakers, meanwhile, have gotten considerably younger and more athletic, but they currently appear to be nothing more than a playoff team.
They have lost the majority of their games to the Clippers over the past decade, and reversing that trend will be integral to preventing the Clippers from becoming more popular in the Los Angeles area.
Here is part two of my tour of the Intuit Dome with Steve Ballmer for SportsCenter and our discussion about the Clippers new home and what it means for the Clippers-Lakers Los Angeles dynamic/rivalry pic.twitter.com/TVcIMW4gFM
