Last season, Harvard took the first ever Battle 4 Atlantis championship, defeating Central Florida in the finals while highly ranked UConn and Florida State played in the consolation game. While following that tournament, all anyone could talk about was how difficult it was to shoot at Atlantis' Imperial Arena, and now I can see why. The resort converted its largest ballroom into an arena, laying the hardwood in the center and surrounding it with 15-20 rows of temporary seating which holds ~2,500 fans. Rather than looking up into a sea of people while shooting, the players see only a few rows of seats and a black curtain behind them, as well as two old-school scoreboards hanging in the corners of the room (see below). If you watched any of the games on NBC Sports Network, you'd have seen that the seats were covered in purplish-blue lighting, making the shooter's background especially dark. It's unlike any other venue I've ever seen, and the first day's games were low scoring (and somewhat ugly) as players adjusted to the conditions.
Duke vs. VCU in the semis, with the famous black curtain and scoreboard in the background.
For the fans, though, the conditions really couldn't be better. We had seats in the fourt row right at center court - which obviously would have been great seats at any arena - but at the Imperial Arena all that stood between us and the court was a narrow aisle and the media table. The only way to get to your seats is to walk right around the court (while rounding the corners, you actually had to step onto the hardwood), so you're always right on top of the action. With the seats only extending ~15 rows deep, even the worst seats in the house would be in the middle of a lower level section at a typical NBA or large college arena. And, despite the black curtain surrounding the entire venue, the Imperial Arena held in the noise really well, making it sound like there were more people there than there really were. This was particularly helpful during some of the consolation bracket games (like Stanford vs. Northern Iowa on Day 2), when the stands were mostly empty as people stayed at the beach and pools during the afternoons and saved their basketball consumption for the big games in the evenings.
The Atlantis also did a great job in converting the conference area of its Coral Towers into a makeshift basketball venue. The convention center lobby and hallways were turned into a temporary entry gate and concourse, and the surrounding ballrooms were converted to concession stands and merchandise stands. Unlike typical stadiums, all of the bathrooms and hallways were clean and open, and the area wasn't cluttered with a ton of advertisements (other than the courtside signage, there was virtually no corporate branding at all). As for in-game entertainment, the tournament did a great job of adding local flavor to the event, as each game had some form of Bahamiam entertainment at halftime - from a steel drum band to a sea lion that dances to "Gangnam Style." From the moment that I walked out from behind the bleachers and got my first look at the court to the championship trophy presentation (featuring indoor fireworks and streamers shot from air-powered guns, below), the Battle 4 Atlantis was incredibly unique. And the uniqueness of the tournament extended far beyond the arena itself - stay turned to Part II, to come.
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