Clippers excited to begin new era in new arena

INGLEWOOD, CALIF.

The design meetings have been going on for years. Technology has evolved throughout the process. Painstaking decisions were made time and time again, right down to what an inch or two difference in leg room between rows would mean or where cupholders should be affixed to the seats.

Finally, Steve Ballmer and the Los Angeles Clippers are ready to build their new home.

The Clippers’ long-awaited, $1.8 billion, privately funded arena officially got a name Friday — Intuit Dome, it’ll be called when it opens in 2024, the team making that announcement hours before the formal groundbreaking ceremony. The practice facility, team offices for both business and basketball operations, retail space and more will all be on the site.

Ballmer, the team’s owner, simply believes it’ll be like no other building in the NBA.

“Basketball mecca! Basketball palazzo!” Ballmer, in his usual excitable way, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

He might be right.

Every detail — from the huge two-sided halo video screen that will hover over the court, to the triple-wide escalators, to how the bathrooms will be designed to get fans back in their seats as quickly as possible — has a purpose. The halo will include 44,000 square feet of 4K LED lighting, slightly more than one full acre and roughly six times the average size of other “big” screens in NBA buildings.

The Clippers currently play at Staples Center, also the home of the Los Angeles Lakers and the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings. Ballmer — who originally didn’t want to build an arena when he bought the team — wound up beginning to plot a Clippersonly home years ago and formally unveiled the project in 2019, saying then that the Clippers would break ground in 2021 and open in 2024.

So far, even with a pandemic and following some legal challenges, he’s right on schedule. The Clippers often felt like tenants at Staples Center, sometimes playing 12:30 p.m. games — which they loathed — because the Lakers or Kings would be playing later that day in the same building.

“We don’t want to play in anybody’s shadow,” Ballmer said.

Technology will be everywhere, such as some that would allow fans to leave their seat, walk to a concession stand in the concourse, grab a beverage or snack and then — if they do as Ballmer hopes — get right back to their seat. There would be no cashier, nobody to take the order, and the customer’s account would be charged automatically.

Even the best suites won’t have big televisions. Ballmer wants fans watching the game from their seat and being part of a home-court advantage.

He wants them comfortable in those seats, too. The leg room — which will be a constant throughout the arena, from the lowest rows all the way to the very top — is going to far exceed the standard in most buildings.

“We treated like the upper bowl like the lower bowl,” Ballmer said. “Nobody gets a bad seat, no matter where you sit in the building.”