The stadium change between Lakers and Clippers
The Los Angeles Clippers and Lakers share a city and a stadium, but sometimes they have to play at home on the same day. Here’s how the stadium process looks.
The Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles is the home stadium of the LA Lakers as well as the LA Clippers. The stadium is the same, but the courts, seating, and basketball hoops are all different. So what happens if they play on the same day?
The process of changing courts at Crypto.com Arena
It happens sometimes that the Lakers and Clippers will need the stadium on the same day. That was the case on Saturday, when both teams had their playoff games just hours apart. The Clippers started at 3:30 p.m. and the Lakers at 10 p.m. The change has to be done with at least 90 minutes to spare before the next game.
There is a whole process that happens in order to change the court. A group known as “The Changeover Crew” start preparing the stadium for the next game from the moment the buzzer sounds at the end of the first.
The whole process of swapping the courts and changing the hoops, plus all the other little details (even the scorer tables are different), typically takes just around 90 minutes. It’s not just the court - the Lakers championship banners are covered up for Clippers games, the signs outside and inside the stadium are changed, the lighting is changed, and even the merchandise sold in the stadium is changed.
There is also an ice rink below for the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings. If the rink does not have to be uncovered, the crew can save around half an hour of time. The basketball court’s floors are made of plywood overlays, with pieces around 4-by-8 feet and weighing a little under 200 pounds. On Saturday, it took around 60 people to get the stadium ready for the Lakers game.
“It’s an amazing crew. It’s hard work. It is physical, everything is heavy. It isn’t like we press a button and it automatically just flips over,” said Crypto.com Arena’s Senior VP of Operations and Engineering, Ignacio Guerra. “The set up is a lot of manual labor. The guys and gals who do this, they take pride in this. It’s the pride that shows because we’ve never missed a deadline.”