Watch: Clippers owner excitedly boasts about toilets in team's new arena
The Los Angeles Clippers have led the NBA in resting players. Now they're leading the league in restrooms as well.
The Clippers held a ceremony in Inglewood on Tuesday to celebrate the last steel beam going up in the Intuit Dome, the team's new arena scheduled to open in 2024. The new complex will have team offices, a practice facility, retail space and toilets. Lots and lots of toilets.
Owner Steve Ballmer was absolutely exuberant about the bathroom options in the Clippers' new home.
Ballmer claims the Intuit Dome's 1,160 toilets and urinals were "three times the NBA average," but the NBA doesn't make those statistics as readily available as points and rebounds.
Perhaps the Clippers are building the arena on the same principles they used when they traded for Paul George after signing Kawhi Leonard: making sure there's a No. 2 option.
It also shows the Clippers are committed to their female fans, who historically face much longer restroom lines at sporting events. Even though the arena is sponsored by Intuit, makers of TurboTax, they want to make sure taking a bathroom break isn't a taxing experience.
It's not the first time Ballmer has boasted about the team's bathroom facilities. At the groundbreaking in 2021, he declared, "I’ve become a real obsessive about toilets. Toilets, toilets, toilets!" He also acknowledged that the arena's architects urge him to call them "fixtures" instead.
The Clippers have been in the shadow of the Lakers since moving to Los Angeles four decades ago. For most of that time, the franchise has been in the toilet. Now, unless construction stalls, the Clippers should be flush with revenue soon. After all, they already have a guy who calls himself "Playoff P."
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