Los Angeles Clippers fans are excited for the bell ringing this season at the team’s new $2 billion home, the Intuit Dome. They can watch replays on the world’s largest double-sided scoreboard, sit in a 51-row section reserved for die-hard supporters and purchase jerseys in the 5,000-square-foot team store.
But despite all that, most of their attention will be focused on the courthouse, whose construction is a story in itself.
It begins in a small mill town called Amasa, Michigan, 2,200 miles from Los Angeles. There, Connor Sports, one of the leading manufacturers of hardwood courts, spent about a year sourcing the wood and constructing the courts. Logs, hundreds of workers, and thousands of hours. At the company’s plant in the woods of the Upper Peninsula, workers worked two 10-hour shifts, six days a week, traversing a maze of conveyors, saws and other machinery to dry, cut, plan and chip wood chips. .
The company builds about 800 courts each year, most of them in high school gyms and recreation centers in all 50 states and beyond. Nearly all of our products are made with Northern Hard Maple, a dense, durable wood harvested from forests above the 35th parallel north, a standard set by the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association, an industry group whose members make the majority of hardwood floors in the United States. It’s made of wood.
Connor also creates some of the most iconic courts in the country, including those used by the NBA and many major college basketball programs. Each consists of approximately 250 4-by-7-foot interlocking panels with attached floors for shock absorption and stability. The so-called portable device can be assembled and disassembled within hours, allowing stadium operators to quickly get on with other events, such as hockey games or concerts.
“This job has taken me all over the world, including a 30,000-square-foot installation in Azerbaijan,” said Jason Gasperich, technical director at Connor Sports. “Some of our international customers know if it’s good enough for the NBA, it’s good enough for them.”
Demand for hardwood courts, which are also used in sports such as volleyball, has been relatively stable over the past decade. Floors last 30 to 40 years, sometimes much longer, but schools are always built and courts are replaced when damaged. Removable coats have a shorter lifespan because they absorb more wear and tear. The NBA requires courts to be replaced at least every 10 years.
The pandemic has rattled the market as school districts cut budgets and projects were delayed. Although demand is starting to recover, companies in the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association, which includes Connor, shipped 19.4 million square feet of flooring last year, down 17.8% from 2019. Supply chain bottlenecks have eased, but contractors are overwhelmed with orders. Establish courts.
Prices vary widely, but a 60-by-120-foot NBA-sized portable court can cost up to $250,000, depending on the finish, while a permanent court costs about half that.
Sales of portable coats are a small portion of the market but are growing at a healthy rate. Connor recently signed a five-year extension with the NCAA to provide courts for men’s and women’s regionals and the Final Fours. The company also produces about a quarter of the gaming courts used by NBA teams, with most of the remainder produced by Robbins Sports Surfaces.
As any basketball fan knows, college and professional courts now feature increasingly elaborate designs. This work is performed by a finishing company that sands, paints, laminates and seals floors for Connor and other court builders. The court can be repainted if the sponsor, logo and color scheme change. Most NBA teams have at least two game courts and an additional practice court. Connor sold three different game courts for the Brooklyn Nets: a classic design, a retro design, and a City Edition floor with a modern design. Teams can highlight various sponsor names and logos using removable vinyl decals around the court perimeter or additional panels, each weighing about 200 pounds, that are replaced inside the court.
“It looks like a new floor to fans, but we just changed the center panel,” said Zach Riberdy, director of marketing for Connor, which employs about 150 people. “About 85% of the courts are the same.”
Almost all of Connor’s maple coats are made in a forest about 100 miles away in Amasa, a town of about 250 where Sawblade is its main restaurant. Connor buys wood from about 40 sawmills and looks for wood closer to the center of the log, which is better for flooring. Most of the wood is delivered green and dried outdoors for several months before being placed in one of 12 kilns heated with wood waste from the mill. The time required to remove most of the moisture from the wood varies depending on the season.
“It takes slightly different amounts of time to dry each tree,” said Gasperich.
The dried wood is sent to the flooring factory next door. Since lumber comes in a variety of sizes, it is first cut into strips about 2½ inches wide. Pass it through a plane to achieve a consistent thickness of approximately 1 inch (15-16 inches to be exact). The machine scans each strip to identify knots and imperfections and marks and removes them with a cutter, shortening the lumber to 1 to 7 feet in length. The strips are sent through a side-matching machine, which adds grooves and tongues to the long edges of the wood to ensure the strips fit together, and is finally planed. The company name and factory number are engraved at the bottom.
End-matching machines add grooves and tongues to the long ends of the strips, which then move them along a conveyor where workers sort them into grades. The tallest two are white or brown in color but have few blemishes. The lowest grades of wood have a deeper color due to slight knots and tints. Strips with cracks or other defects are returned and trimmed.
“I never expected it to be this confusing,” said Erica La Bonte, a lumber grading expert who has worked at Connor for 14 years. “But a lot of things become habits, and you know it when you see it.”
To meet Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association specifications, Amber Emerson inspects sample bundles of strips to ensure they are properly graded. If Mr. Emerson finds consistent errors, he will notify the operator and the operator will recalibrate the machine used. If a bundle contains a certain percentage of defective strips, they are set aside.
“When I go and watch my son play basketball, I’m on the court refereeing,” she said.
The strips used for permanent installation are stacked in 19-square-foot bundles, and the removable coats are sent to different sections with attached floors. Connor has developed a network of suppliers in the Upper Peninsula who provide a variety of components, including souvenir mini boards created by retired wood shop teacher Jim Nocerini. The permanent court’s floors will be built in nearby Iron River by construction company Holm Builders.
Bucky Holm and his sons, Joe, Nathan and Nick, create 85 types of flooring with different dimensions, thicknesses and padding that can affect the bounce of the ball, the movement of the floor or the sound of a dribble. Growing demand has allowed Holms to produce up to 18 units of flooring a week and quadruple the size of the factory.
“Our number one goal is floor consistency,” said Nathan Holm.
The wood pieces are nailed to the subfloor and then shipped to finishing companies in Ohio and Texas. Last June, the Ohio Floor in Shreve, Amish Country, received a portable court from Connor made for Florida State University. It took two weeks to identify the exact paint the school wanted. In mid-July, six workers gathered in a building the size of an airplane hangar next to a portable court for the Windy City Bulls, a G League team.
Summer is a busy time because college and professional teams need courts until late summer. Finishing takes approximately two weeks: two days for assembly, two days for sanding and buffing, and one day for sealant application. The second week involves laying out the lines, logos and lettering, followed by two coats of paint and finishing.
The most accurate work is done by Jason Irias. He spent most of the day working on a Native American head that included feathers and the words “Florida State” and “Seminoles.”
The finished floor is disassembled and placed on a drying rack for at least 10 days. On one side of the factory were stacks of panels waiting to be shipped to DePaul University and other schools.
“If I go to a sports bar, I’ll tell my wife, ‘Here’s what we did,’” Mr. Irias said. “But we’ve experienced so many layers that it’s no longer interesting to her.”
