How the Clippers Engineered the NBA's Best Home Court Advantage

Last fall, when the Los Angeles Clippers lost their first four home games of the season, team owner Steve Ballmer was in a bad way. This was the first season in the Intuit Dome, a $2 billion arena constructed at Ballmer's personal expense and to his idiosyncratic demands. The idea, as Bloomberg Businessweek reported last year before Intuit opened, was to create a raucous environment where fans would help propel the Clippers to victory.
'I'm thinking, 'Oh s---, oh s---, oh s---, we jinxed it,'' Ballmer says during an interview in New York City in May. He's sitting at an empty table in a windowless conference room in a Midtown hotel where, later that evening, he'll accept Sports Business Journal 's award naming the Intuit Dome as facility of the year. The Clippers finally got a win there, on the fifth try, against the San Antonio Spurs, in November. After that game, Ballmer says, he spoke with the team in the locker room. 'I said, 'Jeez, guys, thank you. This thing was going to get demolished.''

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