Dec 21, 2017Opening the Doors
The Atlanta Hawks have unveiled their new $50-million facility that will house a state-of-the-art sports medicine center along with their practice courts.
Many professional athletes go to one facility to practice with their team and another site to receive any extensive sports medicine care. That’s no longer the case for members of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. According to an article from the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the team recently opened a new 90,000-square-foot complex in partnership with Emory Healthcare that includes both a sports medicine center and practice facilities.
“Just over two years ago when [Ressler’s ownership group] bought the Atlanta Hawks, developing a state-of-the-art practice facility and partnership with a world-class medical partner was our No. 1 priority,” Tony Ressler, MBA, the principal owner of the Hawks, said. “I’d like to say: Mission Accomplished.”
The Atlanta Business Chronicle says the new $50 million building, which was privately funded, “is the first in the NBA to be co-located with an entire sports medicine center.” Emory is using about one-third of the square footage to provide sports performance training along with preventative and rehabilitative training.
This partnership with Emory allows the Hawks players immediate access to top-of-the-line equipment and features they may not find elsewhere, including:
- Diagnostic imaging technology
- 3-D motion capture analysis
- Cryotherapy
- Sensory deprivation tanks
- In-ground hydrotherapy
- Force plates for assessing joint stress
- Blood/sweat testing for nutritional deficit analysis
- A 3 Tesla MRI scanner that helps with diagnosing bone bruise and soft-tissue injuries.
Access to some of this equipment is only possible because both the Hawks and Emory will use it. Scott Boden, MD, Chief Medical Officer of the Emory University Orthopaedics and Spine Hospital, explains:
“It wouldn’t make sense to have the [Tesla] scanner for just a 15-man roster,” he said. “[What’s] special about the center is that we will not only treat the Hawks players, but we will also treat other athletes from other teams and leagues from around the world.”
Other groups to be housed in the complex include the Hawks Basketball Operations Department, Emory University’s sports medicine division, and Peak Performance Project. The latter is an applied sports science and performance optimization organization based out of Santa Barbara, Calif. Its Atlanta branch will mark its first new location outside those headquarters.
