Behind the Scenes of the Emirates NBA Cup: Making Courts Come to Life

The second annual NBA in-season tournament, now called the Emirates NBA Cup, came to a close Tuesday night as the Milwaukee Bucks claimed victory over Oklahoma City. While the tournament began a few weeks ago, behind the scenes, sports floor specialists have been working hard since June to make it happen.

All games played as part of the NBA Cup were on specially branded courts for each team, and once again this year, the courts for each team featured an attention-getting completely painted design. Both the portable courts and their designs—by artist Victor Solomon—were new for each team this season. Also new this year was a decision by the NBA to standardize its flooring: All new regular season courts are now Robbins Sports Surfaces courts, all finishes are from Bona US, and all the sanding, painting and coating of the courts is managed by sports floor specialists Praters Flooring in Chattanooga, Tenn.

That created a massive undertaking to prepare for the season now that most of the 30 NBA teams have three courts: their “Core” court, with simpler, classic designs, their “City” court, with some larger-than-life graphics and different colors than their usual branding, and their “Cup” court, completely painted. All of the Cup courts for this season were new, there were 25 other courts that were resanded or were new courts, and the rest had to be screened and recoated. 

“Internally, our team that has been managing that has done a fantastic job … this year we will have delivered 92 courts for the NBA, but we haven’t done that alone,” says Mark Frainie, Praters owner. Praters partnered with other sports floor specialists on the NBA courts,  including The Ohio Floor Company (Shreve, Ohio), Baseman Floors Inc. (Appleton, Wis.), Foster Speciality Floors (Wixom, Mich.), Mountain Heights Flooring (Pleasant Grove, Utah) and Professional Floor Systems (Shelley, Idaho).

Praters handled all Cup courts but one in-house. Once they received the finalized designs from the NBA in early June, “It was all hands on deck for five months, seven days a week,” Frainie says. With their complicated designs, each Cup court takes approximately three weeks if all goes as planned. “When we started this, we had to gear up and hire people for this amount of work, so there’s a percentage of our workforce that the first courts they ever worked on were these Cup courts,” he says. “So now when a normal portable comes through, these guys blaze through it.” 

And while last year the all-painted designs created perceptions among some players that the courts were slippery (even though they were coated with the same finish as their other courts) in year two there were no concerns.

When the court for the Las Vegas semifinals and finals was completed at Praters two weeks ago and installed in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, it marked the culmination of a massive undertaking, but one managed by people with a passion for sport floors. “It’s the people, both internally and externally, that have pulled together to make this happen,” Frainie says. “It’s really been a big lift, but a relatively easy lift, believe it or not.”

All the 2024 Emirates NBA Cup court designs were created by artist Victor Solomon.

"John [Prater] said, 'Get through that Finals court and everybody can rest!' ... so we staged the resting picture on the court when it was done," says Praters Owner Mark Frainie.