This is the House of Mamba, a full-size basketball court built by Nike in Shanghai. The court comes complete "with motion-tracking and reactive LED visualisation technology built into the floor to help American star Kobe Bryant teach his moves to young players in Shanghai." Pretty cool, but can it play animated GIFs?
The court can lay out sets of moves for individual people, create drills based on Bryant's training programme that are adapted for the court, and respond to mistakes as well as display performance stats. When not in use for training and games, the LED surface can display almost any combination of moving images, graphics and colours.
I guarantee it's only a matter of time until all basketball courts have LED floors, with advertisements playing all over them. After that, they'll be holographic. Eventually, actual basketball players won't even be needed, and the results of a game will rest solely on the two opposing coaches playing a giant holographic version of NBA Jam. "Jesus, GW, it's almost like you've
been to the future." MAYBE I HAVE. Keep going for a brief video demo.
