Will fans notice the laser focus on details at the Intuit Dome? Clippers owner Steve Ballmer thinks so.Courtesy of the Los Angeles Clippers
From the day Steve Ballmer latched onto the idea of moving the Clippers out of Crypto.com Arena, the home they’ve shared with the Lakers since 1999, he’s taken very, very (very!) seriously the chance for the organization he’s owned for a decade to step out of the shadow of its much more famous roommates.
“There are two teams in the market and obviously the other team has had a heck of a run,” Ballmer said, a few minutes after a news conference to announce Intuit Dome would host the 2026 NBA All-Star Game. “We need to emphasize some things that we stand for, that we care about,” he added.
Ballmer’s urgency to succeed in that effort, and how he would contribute to it, was immediately evident when the Intuit Dome design process kicked off in late 2017.
“He is a very, very intense person,” said Bill Hanway, AECOM executive vice president, global sports and social infrastructure leader. “But that intensity triggers a level of enthusiasm and dedication to the project that … it’s hard not to get caught up in the spirit of the project.”
Personal intensity is not new for Ballmer. He told Clippers player Paul George during an appearance on George’s podcast last September that as a child approaching the end of second grade, he learned that his teacher thought he would struggle academically in third grade. Ballmer studied all summer to prove his teacher wrong and progressed to the point that, within two weeks of the new school year, he was promoted to fourth grade, bypassing third. That same obsessive work ethic and focus was poured into Intuit Dome.
“The attention to detail is truly extraordinary, and it’s really all with this culture-setting mantra in mind: If I obsess over every single little detail, then everybody else will obsess over every little detail, and everybody who walks into this place is going to feel that,” said Gillian Zucker, Clippers president of business operations.
Maybe fans will notice that their pizza is always freshly made — the venue has 40 pizza ovens for that very reason. Clippers players will certainly notice when they walk out of their locker room that their 85,000-square-foot subterranean practice facility is a short walk to the left and the game court a short walk to the right.
Ballmer isn’t a micromanager, Zucker said, but he deep dives into specific topics, like a seagull hovering at a high level, then plunging into the sea to tackle a particular aspect of the building. Sinks are a good example. On George’s “Podcast P,” Ballmer unleashed his total disdain for shallow-bowled bathroom sinks to the cackling delight of his hosts.
“There is always water on the floor of the bathrooms, I think that looks like shit,” Ballmer said. “How do you make the sink deep enough — I’m still worried about that — so that you’re not splashing water all over? We went through the details, and I think it’s going to come out, but I’m still worried.”
So, the Intuit Dome team learned about faucet pressure, faucet angles, sink depth. … The seating bowl received the same laser focus from Ballmer. As he followed the Clippers to NBA arenas across the country, he maintained a running text dialogue with Hanway:
“Is our bowl tighter than this?”
“I’m uncomfortable sitting here. I don’t have enough leg room.”
“I have to walk too far to the bathroom.”
The Clippers were the only ownership group working with AECOM that tested two rows of seats, instead of just one, to know what the leg room would feel like. Ballmer requested seating bowl overlays to compare Intuit Dome with his favorite NBA viewing experiences, and AECOM designers measured every conceivable dimension of the seating bowl including the hypotenuse of each viewing angle, the first time Hanway has presented that statistic. Ballmer was especially concerned with comfort in the arena’s upper reaches, where space shrinks, but Intuit Dome’s upper concourse seats, at 20 inches wide with a 35-inch tread, will be the roomiest in the NBA.
“He tested us, challenged us on parametric modeling, parabolic bowl design, he wanted to know exactly how the metrics worked and how the math worked,” Hanway said.
In part thanks to COVID-19 lockdowns, AECOM designers got more time with Ballmer than they otherwise might have, and it’s possible they ended up with a venue that uncommonly reflects its owner.
“We tried to take all the twists and turns that might mean something to our fan. I definitely have my own personal desires kind of built in,” said Ballmer.
“Not at the expense of the fan,” he quickly added. “It’s all about the fan.”
