La NBA owns a bomb shelter. Is it meant to protect players in case of a nuclear attack? No, it is designed to protect the images most iconic in basketball history and pass them down to posterity.
The bunker and time capsules are two typical elements of American filmography. Two things that even those who have never lived in the United States have surely seen at least once on TV or in the movies. Nuclear shelters became popular in the days of the Cold War when there was fear of a Soviet nuclear attack, but in many U.S. cities they are still also used to protect against natural disasters. Capsules, on the other hand, are designed to bring glimpses of current life to future generations as well.
Concepts that the NBA has also made its own, transposing them into the bunker it owns in Flanders, in New Jersey. It is a hyper-secure but not secret room, recounted in detail by a report in the The Wall Street Journal, reprinted in Italy by PlanetBasketball. The NBA owns this “room” located in 15 meters underground And here he placed more than 50,000 cassettes with footage of players who have distinguished its history.
Seventy-five years of basketball that are now also accessible digitally to league officials, who catalog them and can view them through an encrypted system. Curious, though, that in the era when cloud-based technologies are gaining momentum, the NBA still resorts to analog to safeguard its history. After all, saving on physical media, kept in such places, still remains the only way to be sure that the memory survives any eventuality. Yet another demonstration of how attentive the American League really is to every aspect concerning the game of basketball.
