Basketball is not meant to be played on glass. That’s a lesson the Big 12 has learned the hard way during its conference tournament in Kansas City.
The conference installed an LED glass court that conference commissioner Brett Yormark hailed as the future of basketball. The court can change colors, light up for three-pointers, and also provide some very bold branding initiatives.
That all sounds really cool. But they also ignore what a basketball court’s first priority is – playing basketball.
The LED court was used for the entirety of the women’s tournament last week and the response was immediate backlash as the design chosen for games was garish and distracting. As the men took center stage in Kansas City, complaints were running rampant about the court and the difficulty players were having finding traction on the glass surface. The final nail in the LED coffin was Texas Tech star Christian Anderson left the Red Raiders’ quarterfinal game with an injury after slipping on the court.
Yormark said that as he talked to the coaches in the semifinals, the opinion was unanimous that the conference should switch to a traditional hardwood floor for the remainder of the tournament.
“After consultation with the coaches of our four Semifinal teams, I have decided that in order to provide our student-athletes with the greatest level of comfort on a huge stage this weekend, we will transition to a hardwood court for the remainder of the Tournament. We look forward to a great Semifinals and Championship Game,” Yormark said.
The conference tournament is not the ideal location to experiment with grand ideas that haven’t been tried in competition before. And now the conference is left with major egg on its face and is probably lucky that the injury situation in Kansas City wasn’t worse.
Brett Yormark and the Big 12 have pushed the boundaries of innovation in the hopes of taking some of the headlines away from the Big Ten and the SEC and the dominance they have over college athletics. Big 12 basketball is strong enough to speak for itself without dangerous gimmicks that put players at risk.
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