Pricey training centers fuel latest 'arms race'

WASHINGTON - The Cleveland Cavaliers launched the latest salvo. On a drizzly October morning, several hundred people gathered along the Cuyahoga River to celebrate the ground-breaking for a gargantuan practice facility that could outclass any training centre in pro basketball.

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WASHINGTON - The Cleveland Cavaliers launched the latest salvo. On a drizzly October morning, several hundred people gathered along the Cuyahoga River to celebrate the ground-breaking for a gargantuan practice facility that could outclass any training center in pro basketball.

"It's a tremendous day in Cleveland," the Cavaliers' president of basketball operations, Koby Altman, told the crowd, "and we can't let the weather dampen our mood because we are standing on what's going to be, this exact location, the most spectacular sports training facility in the world."

A few minutes later, 17 dignitaries - including Mayor Justin M. Bibb; Tom Mihaljevic, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic; and Cavaliers players Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley - plunged gold-plated shovels into the dirt. Fireworks arced towards the river. Recorded music blared over loudspeakers.

The Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Centre, designed by the architecture firm Populous and expected to open in 2027, will escalate the most visible National Basketball Association (NBA) off-court competition of the last decade to more garish and more player-friendly heights.

Since 2014, with basketball operations departments and team payrolls expanding, 20 of the NBA's 30 franchises have opened new practice facilities. It has been an unrelenting contest of innovation and one-upmanship, with most of the participating clubs claiming new advantages in athlete care, roster retention and free-agency recruitment.

In recent years, the price tag to build a stand-alone training center has typically ranged from US$70 million (S$94.4 million) to US$90 million, according to figures cited by the teams, usually paid for by the franchises.