The Los Angeles Clippers are fighting to keep their championship aspirations alive, currently even in a 2-2 playoff series with the Denver Nuggets.
But regardless how the season ends for the Clippers, for longtime fans of the team, as well as owner Steve Ballmer, the 2024-25 season has been an undeniable success.
It’s the team’s first year at their new home in Inglewood, and after years of construction and promises about being the most high-tech indoor arena in the world, the Intuit Dome has proven to be a modern marvel among other sports and entertainment venues.
But the crowning jewel, for Clippers games at least, is “the Wall,” 51 rows of uninterrupted seats stacked high and vertical on one end of the arena.
When opposing players are forced to take their free throws in front of the Wall, they have to contend with a dedicated and highly vetted supporters section with one unified goal: make them miss.
Supporters sections are common in sports like soccer, and can even be found at some baseball stadiums. But they are significantly more rare at indoor basketball arenas.
The Clippers, who have often been regarded as L.A.’s other team, provide affordable tickets for their most dedicated fans to get close to the action and give the team a home-court advantage it may not have enjoyed at the Crypto.com Arena in downtown.
So, after one year of raucous fans, distracting signs, synchronized dances and prepared chants and cheers, has the Wall done its job?
The data, according to Sportico, is a resounding “yes.”
“Shooting against the Wall, specifically, visitors made just 73.4% of their foul shots, which would have ranked last in the NBA and is notably lower than the 76.1% they made on the other end of the floor,” Lev Akabas of Sportico writes.
Opposing teams shooting more than 3% worse at one arena versus the average percentage at others isn’t unprecedented per se, but that big of a disparity from one side to the other certainly is.
When looking at the effectiveness of the Wall, only the Oklahoma City Thunder’s home arena in 2014 had a lower average opponent free throw percentage compared to the rest of the league.
Thunder opponents did eventually crack the code on that arena the following year, Akabas wrote.
“In fact, over the past 20 years, there is nearly zero correlation between away teams’ free throw percentage in an arena and their percentage in that same arena the following season. This suggests that home teams don’t have control over how well visitors shoot from the stripe.”
It’s unclear if the Clippers’ new digs truly has an impact on winning, and it’s definitely too early for any meaningful patterns to develop.
But Ballmer has repeatedly told the media that Intuit Dome was designed with home-court advantage in mind.
There are more toilets per event attendee than likely any other venue in North America, concession stands and merchandise storefronts utilize grab and go technology through facial scans, and there are dozens of clocks around the arena that count down until the action resumes to encourage fans to get back to their seats.
“We do not want people to wait in line, we want them to get back to their damn seats,” Ballmer told reporters during a tour of the construction site in 2022.
In addition to the Wall, upper bowl seats are also 45 feet closer to the action than at Crypto.com Arena.
Ballmer is betting that the more time fans spend in their seats, and the louder and more passionate they behave, will only lead to good things.
So far, he’s been right.
To read the full report from Sportico, click here.