Curated playlist
NBA venues
- Mortgage Matchup CenterMortgage Matchup Center has cycled through a succession of names in its lifetime. It opened in Phoenix, Arizona, on the 6th of June 1992, at a cost of $89 million. The building sits on an eleven-acre site in downtown Phoenix, one block…
- Smoothie King CenterThe New Orleans Arena opened its doors on the 19th of October 1999. Construction costs reached $114 million before the first game was played. This facility sat in the Central Business District next to the Caesars Superdome. It seated…
- Crypto.com ArenaCrypto.com Arena opened on the 17th of October 1999. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band played the first concert ever held inside it. For its first twenty-two years, though, the downtown Los Angeles building carried a different name:…
- State Farm ArenaThe Omni Coliseum stood in downtown Atlanta for nearly three decades before its structural failure became undeniable. Built with Cor-Ten weathering steel, the arena was designed to form a protective rust seal that would ensure longevity.…
- Kia CenterKia Center opened its doors on the 29th of September 2010. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer gave his annual State of Downtown address inside the new building that morning. The ribbon-cutting took place at 10:01 AM. Within two weeks, a Vicente…
- Toyota CenterToyota Center sits 32 feet below street level in downtown Houston, Texas, a deliberate design choice that means fans walk down rather than up to reach their seats. Leslie Alexander, owner of the Houston Rockets, first pushed for a new…
- FedExForumOn the 22nd of July, 2003, a derecho swept through downtown Memphis and nearly toppled the cranes building FedExForum. The arena was still under construction near the famed Beale Street when the storm hit. The cranes held. FedExForum…
- Frost Bank CenterThe arena opened in 2002 as the SBC Center. A twenty-year agreement worth $41 million secured this name for San Antonio-based SBC Communications, Inc. The deal involved Bexar County and the San Antonio Spurs. In November 2005, SBC…
- Capital One ArenaCapital One Arena opened its doors on the 2nd of December 1997, and President Bill Clinton walked straight into the museum inside. He was there for the first event, a basketball game between the Washington Wizards and the Seattle…
- Ball ArenaBall Arena sits on Speer Boulevard in downtown Denver, Colorado, a building that has been home to championship hockey, championship basketball, a presidential nomination, and a wrestling feud that spilled into prime-time television. Opened…
- Target CenterTarget Center opened in Minneapolis in 1990 and has spent the decades since hosting everything from NBA tip-offs to championship gymnastics to a presidential rally. It sits in the heart of downtown, a block from the Warehouse District…
- United CenterUnited Center rises on the Near West Side of Chicago, carrying the name of its corporate sponsor, United Airlines. Up to 23,500 people can fill its seats, the largest capacity of any arena in the National Basketball Association. The…
- Paycom CenterPaycom Center sits in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City, and its history reads like a bet that a mid-sized city made on itself. When the building opened on the 8th of June, 2002, it was deliberately stripped of luxury amenities. City…
- Spectrum CenterSpectrum Center, the indoor arena in Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, has worn three different names since it opened its doors in October 2005. Each name change came not from a rebrand but from corporate acquisition. The building opened…
- Kaseya CenterKaseya Center sits on the edge of Biscayne Bay in Miami, Florida, a building that has worn four different names in its first quarter-century of life. On the last day of 1999, Gloria Estefan opened its doors with a concert. Two days later,…
- Little Caesars ArenaLittle Caesars Arena stands in Midtown Detroit, built at a cost of $862.9 million. It replaced two older buildings at once. One was Joe Louis Arena, longtime home of the Detroit Red Wings. The other was The Palace of Auburn Hills, where…
- Xfinity Mobile ArenaThe site where the Xfinity Mobile Arena now stands was once home to John F. Kennedy Stadium. City planners and developers chose this location in southwest Philadelphia to build a new multi-purpose facility. The project began under the…
- American Airlines CenterAmerican Airlines Center opened its doors on the 17th of July, 2001, and within two nights it had hosted an Eagles concert, the final show of Michael Flatley's Feet of Flames tour, and the beginning of something Dallas had been waiting…
- Scotiabank ArenaScotiabank Arena sits on Bay Street in downtown Toronto on land that was, not long ago, the floor of Lake Ontario. The inner harbour was filled in during the 1850s, the process accelerated by the railroad, turning a stretch of water into…
- Gainbridge FieldhouseGainbridge Fieldhouse opened on the 6th of November 1999, with the Indiana Pacers hosting the Boston Celtics in the building's first NBA game. The arena replaced Market Square Arena. Downtown Indianapolis now had something rare in North…
- Moda CenterModa Center sits in the Rose Quarter of inner northeast Portland, Oregon, a 20,500-seat arena that has been the city's primary indoor sports home since it opened on the 12th of October 1995. Its opening night concert featured David Bowie,…
- Golden 1 CenterGolden 1 Center stands in downtown Sacramento, California, the product of a campaign to keep a basketball franchise in its hometown and a bet that a new arena could revive the city's urban core. The address alone tells part of the story:…
- Chase CenterChase Center opened its doors on the 6th of September 2019 with a concert by Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony, a pairing that set the tone for what this arena would become. Before a single basketball game was played, before a…
- Delta CenterGround broke on the 22nd of May 1990 for a project that would cost ninety-three million dollars. Utah businessman Larry H. Miller led the private financing effort to replace the demolished Salt Palace arena. The new venue opened its doors…
- Fiserv ForumFiserv Forum sits in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On the 20th of July 2021, it hosted Game 6 of the NBA Finals. The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Phoenix Suns 105-98 that night, winning their first NBA championship in 50 years. Just three…
- TD GardenTD Garden stands in Boston, Massachusetts, built directly above the MBTA's North Station. On the evening of the 29th of September, 1995, a farewell ceremony filled the old Boston Garden. WBZ-TV's Liz Walker and CBS anchor Dan Rather hosted…
- Intuit DomeIntuit Dome opened in Inglewood, California on the 15th of August 2024, and within two months a visiting NBA star stood on its court and admitted he could not stop staring. Kevin Durant, playing for the Phoenix Suns in the Clippers' first…
- Rocket ArenaThe building opened its doors in October 1994 as part of the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex. It replaced the Richfield Coliseum as the primary entertainment facility for the region. The facility also supplanted the Wolstein…
- Barclays CenterBarclays Center opened its doors on the 28th of September 2012 with a Jay-Z concert, bringing major league sports back to Brooklyn for the first time since the Brooklyn Dodgers left for Los Angeles in 1957. That gap had lasted more than…
- Madison Square GardenMadison Square Garden has stood for nearly six decades above the platforms of one of the busiest train stations in the Western Hemisphere, and yet the arena itself is older than the building. The name has belonged to four separate venues…