Basketball is meant to be played on blacktop or hardwood. But some big-thinking Big 12 dumbass big-thought it was time to give glass a shot.
That dumbass is conference commissioner Brett Yormark, who installed a high-tech LED court made of glass for the league tournament, which is being contested this week in Kansas City. Turns out glass is fine for backboards, but, as has been clear since the tourney started, not the floor. So now they're uninstalling it: CBS Sports reported Thursday night that the commissioner, who came to the Big 12 after a run as COO of Jay Z’s Roc Nation, decided to yank his avant-garde surface and replace it with "a traditional hardwood court" forthwith. Yormark said he made the decision after talking to “the coaches of our four semifinal teams.”
Probably could have added “and a personal injury attorney.”
The beginning of the end of the glass-court experiment came with about eight and a half minutes left in the Iowa State-Texas Tech quarterfinal. Red Raider Christian Anderson slipped and fell awkwardly on an inbounds play while trying to break free from a double team. Whoever was working the silly court’s LED arsenal made sure the lighting looked marvelous for ESPN’s overhead shot of Anderson sprawled on his back, writhing in pain. The sophomore guard, who’d been named first-team All Big 12 earlier this week, limped to the bench still clutching his naughty bits. He didn’t return to the game, won by Iowa State, 75-53.
Anderson’s groin pull came just one possession after Tech’s LeJuan Watts hurt his foot on a bad landing on the slick floor. Tech was already getting blown out when key players started dropping, so they couldn’t blame the injuries for their loss. But both Anderson and Watts told postgame interviewers it was time for the commish to end his experiment. They see a basketball court as Seinfeld’s Newman saw the chicken at Kenny Rogers Roasters: It’s the wood that makes it good.
"Let's just do it on wood," Watts said.
“I think going back to the normal court is the way to go,” said Anderson.
Players had already expressed their view that the conference’s new court was out of order before the game started slip-sliding away from Tech. Kansas State’s Khamari McGriff came out of Wednesday’s game against BYU complaining about a migraine, the onset of which he attributed to the lights constantly flashing beneath his feet. He was caught on camera trying to get right by covering his head with a towel. Teammate Taj Manning went off on the court after the game: “It’s a bad floor,” he said. “They shouldn’t bring it back. It’s just an eyesore. Constantly changing, flashing different lights and stuff. Nobody wants to play on it.”
The return to wood comes too late for the Big 12 women, whose tournament was played on the same court a week earlier, to player complaints.
The tournament court was described as “the first all-glass floor ever used for legitimate basketball competition in the history of the United States.” Yormark has been keen to add a Euro flair to the historically heartland-centric Big 12; he put the season-opening Iowa State vs. Kansas State football game in Dublin. This particular model of glass floor has been used by several Euroleague teams. CBS Sports reported that the floor was designed by a company called ASB GlassFloor based in Zurich. That Swiss city knows slick sports surfaces: There are currently two NHL players from Zurich, and zero NBA players from Zurich. The Big 12 rented the floor for $185,000, installation, labor and on-site tech support included, directly from ASB GlassFloor. If Anderson’s draft stock slips, the conference's legal bills could quickly eclipse that leasing fee.
Disclosure: I went to Texas Tech and at this point in my life care more about the Red Raiders basketball team than any other sporting enterprise. And Brett Yormark's a dumbass.
