Palm trees, ocean waves, tall firs, and a giant cactus. College basketball courts have gone from standard hardwood to a way for programs to express themselves, recruit, and entertain. The original basketball court design at Oregon’s Matthew Knight Arena is one of the most iconic playing surfaces in sports. The brainchild of legendary Nike shoe designer Tinker Hatfield, it featured a perimeter of brown-hued trees extending inward to form a halo-like shape at center court—an homage to the 1939 national championship Oregon basketball squad known as “The Tall Firs.” Before the arena’s 2011 opening, Hatfield rallied Oregon mega-donor and Nike founder Phil Knight to spring for something unorthodox in a court design. “I asked Phil, ‘What do people see every time they turn on the TV and watch their favorite team play basketball?’ And he goes, ‘I don’t know, the color of the seats,’” Hatfield tells FOS. “I said, ‘No, it’s the floor, Phil.’” Court design is a meticulous, sometimes grueling, p...