By almost any standard, the “palatial” Intuit Dome — home of the Los Angeles Clippers — stands alone with its glitz, glamour and innovation.
Whether the bells and whistles of this shining new basketball mecca do anything to help its team ascend to Southern California hoops royalty and dethrone the Los Angeles Lakers is a totally different issue.
The second-year home of the Clippers gets its Hollywood closeup Sunday, playing host to the NBA All-Star Game and showing off to a national audience what’s widely regarded as America’s most modern and luxurious arena.
“This is as good as advertised — 'palatial' comes to mind,” USA Basketball managing director and NBC sports analyst Grant Hill said during his recent first visit to the building.
“This is my first time on the court. I was in the back beforehand and just — the size, the rooms, all the thought that went into building this place — pretty spectacular.”
The hardwood dojo, in the city of Inglewood 3½ miles east of Los Angeles International Airport, is the audacious creation of the Clippers' owner, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
"Building one of the most technologically advanced venues in the world provides the Clippers a platform to create experiences and engage fans in ways other venues aren't able to," said Courtney Brunious, an assistant professor of clinical management and organization at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business.
"This alone makes them more relevant, both to fans and the business community, in addition to any relevance gained from on court success."
Clipping the Lakers' wings
But even if the Clippers, thanks to their fancy new digs, are enjoying new "relevance," the notion of their challenging the 17-time champion Lakers for L.A. supremacy seems far-fetched.
"I've never met Steve Ballmer personally, but he seems like a fierce competitor," said Andrew Rohm, co-director of the M-School Institute of Marketing at Loyola Marymount University.
"It's clear he wants to win games and he wants to be the winning team [of L.A.]. But that's going to take some work, because the Lakers have had such a head start in terms of history and tradition, but it's got to start somewhere, right?"
Intuit Dome’s most jarring feature is its 38,375-square-foot “Halo Board,” a wraparound scoreboard that carries game action and displays running statistics and graphics.
Artificial intelligence and facial recognition affect just about all fan services in the $2 billion arena, which seats 18,000 for basketball.
“We’re really excited to welcome the world,” Gillian Zucker, the Clippers' president of business operations, told NBC's "TODAY" show ahead of Sunday’s national showcase.
“Obviously, it’s an honor to be able to host NBA All-Star. When we walk in, I mean, we just hope that [fans and players] have this experience that makes them feel like this place was built for them.”
The Wall of sound
Despite all those high-tech features, Clippers officials said they’re proudest of a decidedly old-school feature of the building — “The Wall.”
It’s a steep section of seating reserved for Clippers fans — no opposing team fans allowed — where standing and chanting are encouraged. The Wall replicates an ultra fan setting straight out of a European or South American soccer match.
"We had this idea that we could have this standing supporter section that could help deliver home-court advantage in this unique way," Zucker said. "That would be a real asset to the building and create a distinct personality for Intuit Dome."
In a challenge far steeper than the 51-row Wall, Ballmer is seeking to shake up the Southern California sports hierarchy.
For the past seven decades, pro ball in the region has been ruled by the Lakers and baseball’s Dodgers as the alternating Nos. 1 or 2 of Angeleno affection.
The Clippers, since they moved to L.A. from San Diego in the fall of 1984, have been nothing but an afterthought, and their crib has played a significant role in that second-class status.
While the Showtime Lakers were winning titles and hosting celebrities at the Fabulous Forum, the Clippers spent their first 15 Southland seasons at the perpetually dilapidated L.A. Sports Arena, where the Democratic Party met in 1960 and nominated John F. Kennedy.
It met the wrecking ball in 2016.
The Clippers moved in with the Lakers in 1999 at the Staples Center just south of downtown, having to endure decades of constant reminders that they're underachievers compared with their more successful roommates.
Home sweet Dome
In the 1½ years at their new home in the Intuit Dome, it's too early to tell whether the Clippers have made any dent in the Lakers' hold on L.A. fandom.
The Lakers still have one the best 1-2 combos in basketball, LeBron James and Luka Dončić, and they are 32-21 this season. The Clippers are on the edge of the playoff picture at 26-28.
"It's not necessarily an either/or for relevance given the size and strength of this market," said Brunious, of USC.
After the All-Star Game, the spotlight on the Intuit Dome will get even bigger in 2½ years when the 2028 Summer Olympics come to town. Two of the event’s signature competitions, men’s and women’s basketball, will come to Century Boulevard — and not the Lakers' home, now known as Crypto.com Arena.
So the Clippers have the better building even if they may not yet have the better franchise.
"We cannot wait for the Olympics, obviously," Zucker said. "That’s very, very exciting to be on a world stage and be able to showcase Intuit Dome. The building really was built for events like that with the number of locker rooms that we have and it just being really a centerpiece for basketball. I think that the world will really enjoy the basketball events at the Olympics."
