Projection mapping is becoming the hot new tech used by NBA teams before a game to pump up the crowd. Recently, the Los Angeles Clippers became one of several teams to incorporate projection mapping at their stadium. They first demonstrated the tech in a regular season game against Denver Nuggets where they turned the floor at the Staples Center into a spectacular site.
With this projection mapping, eight high-definition (1080p) projectors are focused on the court layering images on top of one another. These projects allow for teams to get extremely creative with the designs and spectacles they produce for the crowd. As Olivier Willems from PSFK notes, in the instance with the Clippers, they had digital balls fly off the on-court projection and the attendants picked up and threw real balls into the crowd. Then they ended the projection with some highlights of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin to get the crowd going.
The 3D animations that the projection mapping produces, along with the explosive opening videos and the physical LED balls, allow the fans to be a part of and experience a pregame show that was previously not possible. The result is an explosion of applauses and screams all before a single second is played in the game.
So when teams and players feed off of crowd excitement and play with more energy on the court this projection mapping can realistically be credited for contributing to better production on the court.
The Clippers aren’t even the only team that uses this technology in the NBA. The Cavaliers, Hawks, Kings, and Sixers are just some of the teams that have notably used projection mapping this season and it’s very likely we will see projection mapping become more popular in the next few years around the league.