NBA teams leave no stone unturned when it comes to trying to obtain a competitive advantage, and it sounds like the high-tech bench seats at Fiserv Forum have received the seal of approval from Milwaukee Bucks players.
The state-of-the-art seats are the brainchild of University of Colorado mechanical engineering professor Jack Zable, who came up with the original prototype.
The final iteration of the seats, after three years of design, required the work of “12 University of Colorado students, a New Zealand research group and six prototypes to perfect,” writes ESPN’s Malika Andrews.
The seats stand in stark contrast to the standard folding chairs found in most NBA arenas, which fail to take into account the immense size of professional basketball players. They can be automatically raised to accommodate players’ height so their knees are not up around their chins, as is the case when the likes of Brook Lopez takes a seat on the bench in other arenas.
The seats can also be heated up to and beyond 106 degrees Fahrenheit, which studies suggest is the ideal temperature to maintain consistent muscle temperature.
Given the state-of-the-art nature of the bench seats, it’s hardly a surprise that Bucks players love them.
“ They’re definitely great,” Khris Middleton said. “I put my seat all the way to the top. It’s not too comfortable to be scrunched all the way up. The heat is definitely needed. You see players with heat packs all over their bodies all the time, so to have a chair that heats replaces the heat packs.”
“It’s a pretty good bonus. You get to warm your buns up,” George Hill said. “I’ve never had anything like that before.”
“The seats are great, but not because of the heat — because they are adjustable,” Malcolm Brogdon said.
The Dallas Mavericks were the first team to install adjustable seats, albeit sans warmers, and the Golden State Warriors are presently looking into the technologies employed by the Bucks for the soon-to-be-opened Chase Arena.
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