Cowboys Stadium has the floor for All-Stars

By DWAIN PRICE

dprice@star-telegram.com

ARLINGTON -- When it comes to building the playing surface for an NBA All-Star game, the process is old hat for Doug Hamar.

Hamar, the president and CEO of Horner Sports Flooring out of Dollar Bay, Mich., has built the floor for the previous 26 NBA All-Star games. It's a tedious endeavor, but the kid in Hamar sees the fruits of his labor when he watches various sports shows on television.

"There's very, very few products that folks who get involved in manufacturing, where they can go home at night and turn the TV on and say, 'Hey, I made that product,'" Hamar said. "And that's something that obviously we can do with our product.

"It's to the point where my son says, 'Dad, which floor don't you have?'"

Hamar has added another playing surface to his vast collection since his company is the one that built the court for Sunday's NBA All-Star Game, which will be played at Cowboys Stadium. The court, which was put down Tuesday night, consists of 350 pieces of maple 4 feet by 8 feet that are 23/4 inches thick.

It took a crew of eight nearly five hours to install the floor, which is 29 inches off the ground on a raised platform.

It also took four weeks to paint what was originally the same playing surface Texas and North Carolina used when they played the first basketball game in Cowboys Stadium in December.

A standing-room-only crowd in the neighborhood of 90,000 is expected to attend Sunday's game. And Brett Daniels wants everyone to know that the All-Star Game is not serving as a trial run for the Super Bowl, which will be held in this same venue next year.

"There's certainly going to be things we can learn from [the All-Star Game]," said Daniels, the director of corporate communications for the Dallas Cowboys.

"But just to consider that we're going to have the largest crowd to ever witness a basketball game in the history of mankind, I wouldn't call that much of a dress rehearsal.

"To have 24 of the greatest players in the game today down here performing in front of 80,000-90,000 people will be something special, so I would say it's big-time. It doesn't get much bigger than that."

The largest crowd to witness an NBA All-Star Game is 44,735 that attended the 1989 midseason classic at the Astrodome in Houston. That's surpassed by the largest crowd to attend an NBA regular-season game, which was the 62,046 that showed up at the Georgia Dome on March 27, 1998, when Chicago's Michael Jordan played his final regular-season game with the Bulls in Atlanta against the Hawks.

Meanwhile, the largest crowd to attend a college game occurred when 78,129 fans appeared at Detroit's Ford Field in 2003 for a game between Michigan State and Kentucky.

"This is one-of-a-kind and we just think the fans are going to love it," said Jack Hill, general manager of Cowboys Stadium.

"The guys putting down the floor said this is a very intricate painting pattern for them.

"When we finish it we'll go back through and test it with a basketball and make sure its stiff enough for everybody, and no dead spots, and then we're ready to play."

Hamar's company also built the playing surface for the Texas-North Carolina game, meaning he had a leg-up on where the kinks needed to be worked out.

"This created a whole new dimension for our team back in Michigan," Hamar said. "They were very, very pleased to know that they were going to have a hand in setting a record -- that being the attendance record for Sunday night's game."

Dwain Price, 817-390-7760

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