CLEVELAND — The drop from the basketball court at Cleveland’s main indoor sports arena to the thin sheet of rubber covering the hockey ice below is about 10 inches, the length of nearly two iPhones.
Every night of a NBA At a game at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, which opened in October 1994, players, coaches and fans shelling out thousands of dollars for seats on the field plop into chairs whose legs rest firmly in place. below the playing surface.
“Just getting in and out of groups (during downtime) is hard for me. » the Los Angeles Lakers Coach Darvin Ham talked about the experience of training on Cleveland’s slightly elevated field. “I have big feet, so I hope I don’t get planted.”
For more than 1,200 regular season games, including all those LeBron James-fueled in the playoffs, nothing remarkable came from that awkward 10-inch drop from the field to the ground below. Until last Wednesday.
In the second quarter of an otherwise forgettable resounding victory for the Miami heat above RidersHeat shield Dru Smith jumped while playing defense, landed out of bounds and his foot, perhaps slipping on a sheet of paper with first quarter statistics printed on it, went overboard. His knee buckled and the result was a serious, season-ending right ACL sprain. Afterward, Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said Cleveland’s field was “dangerous.”
“Maybe it’s something that can be resolved as the league moves forward,” Spoelstra told reporters Friday in New York, after Smith’s injury was confirmed as season-ending. “I doubt anything will change with the flooring. It’s a danger in our minds and probably in the minds of a lot of other teams as well.
A Heat spokesperson did not immediately return a message asking whether the team had filed a formal complaint. Spoelstra suggested that after Wednesday’s injury, and multiple NBA sources agreed, there was no other court in the NBA with that kind of drop.
Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse is home to minor league hockey and Disney on Ice. It’s not immediately clear what the solution would be, other than perhaps replacing the thick blocks of wood between the field and the ice.
The Lakers, who play the Cavaliers on Saturday night, are the first team to play in Cleveland since Smith’s injury, and the incident was a topic of conversation within the team during its morning visit.
‘It’s a little scary, to be honest,’ Los Angeles guard Austin Reaves said.
“It’s something that absolutely needs to be looked at,” Ham said. “Every time…you find yourself in a situation where someone is hurt and at risk of getting hurt, and in this particular case it’s the ground, I think they need to take a look at it and see if there are ways to improve things. »
Many venues that host the NCAA Final Fours have significantly elevated courts, much higher than the court in Cleveland. Cavaliers coach JB Bickerstaff, who played two years at the collegiate level at Minnesota, which plays on a field about 3 feet above the arena floor, said, “I could see how opponents who are not used to it could see it as a distraction.
“Our guys are comfortable playing here,” Bickerstaff said. “We haven’t had any incidents (among Cleveland players) because of the way our floor is constructed.”
Not only have these been the conditions of Cavaliers home games for the past 30 years, but many people who remember the team’s old building in a suburb between Cleveland and Akron, the Coliseum, say the field It was also raised, because there was also hockey ice underneath.
(Photo: Jason Miller/Getty Images)
