The Cavaliers and the NBA will meet to discuss the possibility of changing the unusual court design at Rocket Arena, reports Joe Vardon of The Athletic.
The Cavs’ home court, which features a gap between the arena floor and the playing surface, is under scrutiny again after Lakers star Luka Doncic fell off the sidelines on Wednesday and injured his left ankle.
“While improvements have been made to the arena floor over the years to address this issue, the NBA and the Cavaliers are revisiting the situation given the incident (on Wednesday),” a league spokesperson said, per Vardon.
As Vardon explains, the Cavs have the only raised home court in the NBA — it’s about 10 inches above the rubber mat that covers the arena’s hockey rink, with floor seats positioned on the rubber that covers the ice. A Cavs spokesperson told The Athletic that the court is “fully compliant” with NBA rules, but the Lakers aren’t the first team to submit a complaint to the league about the design.
The Heat contacted the NBA to express concerns about the layout back in the fall of 2023, when Dru Smith fell off the side of the court and suffered a season-ending ACL injury. Doncic appears to have avoided a serious injury himself – he’s listed as questionable to suit up on Friday – but the National Basketball Players Association has conveyed its own concerns about what it views as a “safety issue,” Vardon writes.
As Vardon outlines, there are several potential fixes the Cavs and the NBA could consider, though none would necessarily be easy or cheap.
Possible solutions might include widening the court to put the floor seats on top of it; getting rid of the wood blocks the court sits on and making sure the arena stays cold enough that the ice wouldn’t melt through the rubber and affect the court; or reducing the size of those wood blocks to narrow the gap between the court and the arena floor, mitigating the drop-off.
So when this took Dru Smith out for an entire season, and effected his actual livelihood, people made excuses and even put blame on him, but now it matters b/c Luka is involved lol.
This should have happened years ago. Clown stuff that it wasnt addressed previously
This is way overdue. It seems like adding 6 ft to the sidelines at the same height as the court with the seats on top should be relatively simple.
Are the Cavs/arena owners that cheap that they won’t pay for a whole court?
Well, if Luka wasn’t showboating and had made an attempt to you know, get back on defense instead of posing on one foot till he was in the second row. I like how you dont even mention it was 1000000% Lukas fault this happened.