Inside the Players Lounges: The designer’s view

We've written before about how “little things” mean a lot for NBA players like our story on the Nets family lounge at Barclays Center. But “big things” mean a lot as well ... like the world-class design of the players lounges at Barclays and HSS Training Center, including oversized furniture for oversized human beings!

The players lounges at Barclays Center and HSS Training Center are meant to be refuges for the 15 Nets on the roster. That's the way Sean Marks wants it. It builds camaraderie and loyalty, he believes. Player amenities abound: big screen TV’s and video game consoles. A ping pong table. A rooftop bar. Not to mention a kitchen and even a barber shop.

But for the organization, design matters, too. ONEXIM president Irina Pavlova engaged Manhattan interior designer B.A. Torrey to work on the players’ space at both locations. Marks and Nets operations director Tony Brasile helped set the priorities. Now, Torrey has posted images of his work on Instagram and on his company website.

It's impressive. The use of the Nets black-and-white motif is clearly evident. So is the Brooklyn theme. The architect’s sightlines lead the eye to well-placed gallery-sized portraits of the current roster. Not so evident is the “little thing” that became a “big thing:” the lounges were put together with the dimensions of NBA players in mind.

One example: Torrey designed and built oversized lounge chairs and sofas, even had an early models field-tested by the tallest Net!

“We quite literally scaled the sofa and chair dimensions up to comfortably accommodate Brook Lopez,” Torrey told NetsDaily. “Tony (Brasile) arranged to have a prototype of the lounge chair delivered during the season for Brook to test out for size and comfort, and even though the chair virtually swallowed her, Irina gave it her thumbs up as well!”

So as Torrey notes they're “oversized to comfortably fit every 7’0” player in the league”... even if, for the normal-sized human like Torrey, they have an “Alice in Wonderland” ... or “Gulliver’s Travel” look.

When it was all done, Torrey says, the Nets paid tribute to his artisans.

“Tony invited the carpenters, seamstresses, frame builders, metal workers and upholsterers who built all the furniture to a home game, along with their families,” Torrey noted. “There were over 77 people who got to attend a Brooklyn Nets game (with incredible seats, no less).”

Here's a link to Torrey’s new online gallery of his work at Barclays and some Instagram postings...

And here’s the link to Torrey’s HSS Training Center gallery as well as some older Instagram posts. There’s a lot of similarity but the big difference, of course, is the Barclays Center lounge is closed off. The HSS Training Center has the spectacular view of New York harbor and the Lower Manhattan skyline.

That view! It never gets old. But the view, for all it’s worth, is only part of the attraction. It's the “"little things” that get bigger over time.

As for Torrey, he has a planned update. “Can’t wait to see championship photos on the walls next!”