When a fan tunes into a Brooklyn Nets home game on TV, the
Nets want them to recognize the venue right away. The stark, colorless palette
and herringbone paneling on the hardwood floor will be the most obvious hints
that the game in question is being broadcast in high-definition from the
Barclays Center, not some passé, nondescript old barn that had ample parking
but no "weathered steel" exterior.
In case those clues are not quite enough, the Nets have
another, more subtle way to tip off fans. The Barclays Center will have not
one, but two distinct lighting systems for basketball — one for the Nets and
one for everyone else, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"The one for everyone else is a metal-halide system,
which is the sort of bright, white lighting used at most sports arenas,"
the Journal's Scott Cacciola writes. Those lights "will be used when
Barclays is host to college basketball — and that includes Kentucky's game
against Maryland in November."
The Nets' lights will provide a "theater-like"
atmosphere, however, with the court appearing to be illuminated while the rest
of the arena goes dark. This effect always made the Great Western Forum stand
out whenever the Los Angeles Lakers played on TV, although the old Forum's
unique on-TV look was merely an optical illusion and not the effect of any
fancy lighting. The Lakers recreated the effect at the Staples Center using the
same "halogen system" as the Nets.
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