NBA unveils Celtics’ alternate court design for In-Season Tournament games

For the first time in franchise history, the Boston Celtics will be playing some of their home games on a court that doesn’t have a parquet design.

On Monday morning, the NBA officially unveiled the alternate court designs that all 30 teams will use for In-Season Tournament games. Boston’s design features a dark green paint job with a wooden-colored runway down the center. The “city edition” logo for the Celtics is featured at center court, on top of a painting of the NBA Cup trophy.

In a statement, the NBA said that the alternate courts will be used for all group-stage and quarterfinal tournament games. The league added that the goal is to make it “instantly clear” to fans when they are watching an In-Season Tournament game.

“The courts, which will be used for Group Play and the Quarterfinals, showcase a bold and distinctive design scheme league-wide, making it instantly clear to fans when a game carries NBA In-Season Tournament implications,” the statement read. “The unified look represents the first time that the league has implemented an alternate court for all 30 teams and the first time that any NBA team has played on a fully painted court with no woodgrain details.”

Since their inception in 1946, the Celtics have always played their home games on a parquet-patterned floor. The original design came to fruition due to a lumbar shortage after World War II, according to what Celtics Vice President of Media Services, Jeff Twiss told NBC Sports Boston’s Chris Forsberg in 2022.

“What Walter Brown, the original owner of the Celtics, did in order to I guess attract fans and attract good players maybe back then — an early selling point — was to get a good, quality floor made,” Twiss told Forsberg. “The only way they could do that was getting scraps of wood at lumber yards throughout Boston and put together a floor. And it just happened to be in patterns that formed a parquet-type of a design.”

The new floor design will make its debut on Nov. 10, when the Celtics host the Brooklyn Nets for their group-stage opener. Boston’s new “City Edition Uniforms” will be worn to accompany the painted floor.