If I Could Design the Timberwolves' Floor Part I

When the Wolves announced that they were going to redesign their logo before the 2008-2009 season, I was understandably very excited because it meant a new court design. My friends and I feverishly daydreamed about what we though the new court should look like. Remarkably, nobody from the T-Wolves organization contacted us for input, so our great ideas never came to fruition. However, thanks to the power of Photoshop and my overwhelming nerdy love for things like this, I was able to bring my imaginary design to life...sort of.

First, for the sake of completeness here is the court design that was used from 1996-2008.

The court was simple and pretty understated, with some really cool features including the parquet-style floor and the trees outlining the court. I would've been fine with simply an updated version of this for the 08/09 season.

Instead, we got this, a rather dramatic change.

All in all, it's not a bad design and it's grown on me over the years. For some reason it looks a lot better in person than on TV. The two-tone wood really looks unattractive on TV for unknown reasons, which led to the almost universal panning it received initially.

Let's summarize:
Likes: logo placement, paint coloring
Dislikes: two-tone wood instead of the parquet, plain colored wood surrounding the court

So, with that in mind here's my redesign of my beloved Timberwolves' floor:

Changes:

• Added in the parquet flooring
• Outlined the court in black, which I think makes the rest of the floor really pop
• Changed the baseline text from "Timberwolves" to "Minnesota." I really wanted the court to represent that this was Minnesota's team.
• I fiddled with the color scheme at the top of the key. I copied this element from the old court because I like how the black/grey matches up with the split colored face of the logo. It's the one thing I'm not entirely in love with.
• Updated the Target Center logo. While I appreciate how understated it is in the current design, I wanted to see what it would look like in Wolves' blue and with the Bullseye logo.
• Changed the font on Timberwolves.com to match the team script. The font currently used just looks lame to me.