House of Mamba - Reactive LED Basketball Court

By Avinash Yadav

Photography: Courtesy AKQA

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In a first-of-its-kind, the digital design team of AKQA and world’s leading sporting brand Nike lend a dramatic touch to the game of basketball via a pulsating LED basketball court!

Assisted by multidisciplinary design studio Rhizomatiks from Japan and real estate pro WiSpark from China, the sports aficionados have come together to tell a story that is woven around the innovatively designed court in an engaging basketball marketing campaign, creating a socio-documentary drama in China.

 

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Interestingly, this multi-phased campaign (Nike and the RISE team, the challenge and the especially designed LED court) is an elaborate effort to encourage the game of basketball among young Chinese.  Designed in tune with the persona of basketball legend, Kobe Bryant’s competitive spirit and buoyant attitude, and Nike’s legacy of athletic innovation, the court will train 10 finalists hand-picked by Kobe to have 3 finalists ultimately play in the Nike World Basketball Festival in Barcelona, Spain from September 5 – 7, 2014.

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Meanwhile, the training episodes have taken TV China by storm - the real drama being played on a highly customized live LED basketball court that is designed to technological perfection. The flooring itself, comprises four layers – a wooden base platform that gives the court a natural bounce to help the players dunk the ball in the basket; next is an LED layer that has over a thousand 2 x 2ft interlaced LED screens; and a thick glass layer sitting atop it; and finally an adhesive surface – a real basketball playing surface that covers the glass layer for that perfect on-court movement, bounce and grip.

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Direct connectivity of computers to the court helps in transmitting seamless instructional graphics, video content, live feeds and brings player-tracking to life, creating a rhetorical effect that disperses energy on the court. The court is customized to specification with motion-tracking sensors that aid player-court interaction, while the reactive LED visualization software helps to train, guide, track movement, speed, and time and challenge the RISE players through a variety of drills based on Bryant's training and adapted specifically for the court, making the whole idea of gaming a pulsating experience! What’s more, the court is also programmed to flexibly gel into different training scenarios and change drills instantly, completely in sync with changing requirements.  

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The program shows great potential of being deployed in other sports as well. After all, as Kobe Bryant puts it, “It’s never about the destination; it’s always about the journey.” AKQA and NIKE have just done it!