It would be a heavy lift for everyone: team employees; league staff who had to locate 29 available courts and arrange to rent some of them; the painting and refinishing companies
who would have to accelerate some jobs to fulfill the league’s request; even trucking companies who would transport the courts to those refinishing facilities.
Some arenas need courts of slightly different total widths and lengths depending on several variables, including court-side seating.
“It was sort of like playing Tetris,” Arena said. “But everybody was like, ‘I get it. I understand why we are doing it.’ I get tingly now thinking about it. It has been a remarkable collaboration to finish these in time.”
The league stressed that the template was essentially non-negotiable, but gave teams input into the color choices. That process took another week or two. Meanwhile, the league
found courts and readied its refinishing and painting partners. Some are used college courts. Two teams — the Indiana Pacers and Suns — repainted the floors used by the WNBA
teams in their respective cities. All 29 are sourced from the only three companies that manufacture NBA courts: Horner Sports Flooring, Robbins Sports Surfaces and Connor Sports.
At the Praters Flooring facility in Rossville, Georgia, crews sped up pre-existing finishing and painting jobs to clear as many of its 10-
floor slots as possible for the NBA’s incoming mega-project. Praters ended up painting and refinishing 11 of the 29 in-season courts, and
with those 10 slots, could handle several courts at once. (A total of 10 companies participated in the refinishing, sanding and painting of the 29 courts, league officials said.)
“We were very nervous three weeks ago, because it was going to be very challenging,” said John Prater, the founder and CEO of
Links >> Stream 1 HD Stream 2 HD Stream 3 HD Stream 4 HD
Praters. “Nothing ever goes totally according to plan. For our employees, it was, ‘Hey, it’s 4 p.m. on Friday and I bet you want to go home, but nobody can go home right now.'”
Prater had a crew of 25 to 30 people working at least six days per week on the 11 courts. A repainting can take two weeks, Prater said.
The company compressed that to about a week per court. Each court requires about 50 gallons of paint, Prater said. The company
acquires paints from a supplier — Bona — and then mixes them to match each specific PMS (Pantone Matching System) shade as specified by the league and teams
