The Celtics escaped Toronto with a win Friday night in a tight in-season tournament matchup against the Raptors. However, the bigger story after the game ended up being the court itself rather than the game.
Jaylen Brown and several other players on both teams were slipping and sliding on Toronto’s new tournament court for much of the evening. Brown ultimately left the game prematurely in the closing seconds of regulation after tweaking his groin after one final slip. After Boston’s 108-105 win, Brown did not hold back about his feelings.
“I slipped. That’s it. I slipped,” Brown told reporters in Toronto per Adam Himmelsbach. “I think I might have strained my groin a little bit. We’ll see how it feels, but the court was just slippery all game. I think as players we’re all here for the In-season tournament because it’s going to generate revenue, excitement, competition but we’ve got to make sure the floor is safe to play on.
“We can’t put our player out here and risk their health. Tonight I thought the floor was unacceptable. I think guys were slipping all over the place, not just me.”
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The problem for the NBA now is that Friday’s situation in Toronto is far from an isolated incident. Several players around the league have complained about the slickness of the new unique tournament courts created for all 30 teams for use just on tournament nights. One tournament court in Dallas was even taken out of use after a single use due to a “manufacturing issue.”
The background around these courts is making the NBA look particularly bad in this instance. ESPN’s Zach Lowe chronicled this month how in-season tournament courts were decided upon in the summer and had to be rushed into production this fall to be ready in time for this season.
The crazy color schemes on a lot of the courts have succeeded to a degree in creating buzz around the tournament in recent weeks as it launched. However, numerous slippery floor incidents are suddenly putting the league in a horrific spot. The NBA will look like they are jeopardizing player safety if they don’t pull the plug on these courts soon, especially if the complaints from players continue around the league.
Ultimately, what was a huge expense in creating all 30 new courts on a rushed timetable seems like a questionable choice at best. A simple but noteworthy tweak to already created courts that highlighted that a tournament game was being played could have done the job just as well. Instead, we have more people complaining about the surfaces of the tournament games themselves rather than the games being played.
There is still time left for the tournament to be a success for this year and moving forward. However, it would behoove the NBA to admit their mistake here and keep this issue from becoming a bigger distraction and safety issue.
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