Kevin Durant Compares Clippers’ New Intuit Dome to OSU’s Gallagher-Iba Arena
The LA Clippers played their first-ever game at Intuit Dome on Wednesday, hosting superstar Kevin Durant and the Phoenix Suns in the new $2 billion arena.
One of the primary aspects of the new arena is The Wall, which features 51 rows of uninterrupted rows of seats that rise to the top, the bottom of which is filled with frenzied Clippers fans.
The Suns came away with the overtime win behind Durant’s late-game heroics, but in the postgame he had nothing but awe for the new arena and its Wall.
“Incredible, I loved it,” he said following the win. “I absolutely love The Wall that they got, yeah it’s insane.”
“It was crazy, I was staring at it the whole time, I’m not used to that. I think I experienced it in … Oklahoma State has a similar arena like that, obviously not that big, but the seats went straight up, I always thought that was cool.”
The now-36-year-old superstar is familiar with Gallagher-Iba arena — which does feature the same straight-up style of The Wall — having played for then-Big 12 rival Texas in college and then suiting up for the local Oklahoma City Thunder for nine seasons.
Durant's time in GIA was decades ago, but Cowboys fans still fill those very seats. And will this year, too, with new head coach Steve Lutz set to roll out his very first product at Oklahoma State.
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Derek is co-founder of All Pokes and publisher for Draft Digest and Inside The Thunder for Fan Nation, powered by Sports Illustrated. He has been a sports writer in the Oklahoma market for five years now covering a variety of sports over the course of his career.