The Big 12 basketball tournament is ditching slippery LED courts for hardwood

They may be great for fan engagement and selling ads, but the Big 12 has decided to replace the innovative glass-covered LED floors at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Center with a traditional hardwood finish. It will be used for the remainder of the tournament during semifinal matches and the championship game.

The LED floors, which were previously used during the 2024 NBA All-Star game at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, display animations and graphics that can also interact with players’ movements. They’re designed to be softer than hardwood floors while providing the same amount of grip. However, during the women’s Big 12 basketball tournament last week, and the opening rounds of the men’s tournament this week, some players reported issues with slipping and grip, according to ESPN.

Texas Tech University player Christian Anderson blamed the LED floor for a fall that resulted in a groin injury during the second half of a game against Iowa State University on Thursday. “Obviously the floor is a bit slippery, so I think I just kind of misstepped or did a movement that caused me to slip and kind of ended up in a little unnatural position,” he says, according to ESPN.

The grip issues and injuries led to the decision last night by the coaches of the semifinal teams and Big 12 conference commissioner Brett Yormark to revert the court’s floor back to hardwood for the finals.

While opinions on the glass LED floors seem to vary between teams and coaches, one of the big issues is players simply lacking experience on the new surface. Texas Tech’s coach Grant McCasland told CBS Sports, “we’re just not used to playing on it, and so the difficulty is the familiarity of how it responds, and it does respond differently. Am I saying it caused problems? It was a challenge just because we don’t play on it enough to get used to how to respond to it. And I think for quick guards and change of direction, it’s difficult.”

Projectors have been used in many stadiums and arenas for over a decade to create similar animations without the need to swap out traditional playing surfaces. But that technology can only be used while players are on the sidelines. The benefit of LED floors is that they can be used throughout an entire game without glaring lights or creating shadows — assuming they’re not running distracting animations during a match, and players actually want to use them.