Basketball goes to Church

Basketball is everything in Chicago. This sentence, used by Nike to present its latest project in the Windy City, best expresses the relationship between the game invented by professor Naismith and the city that brought the NBA on top of the world thanks to that deity called Michael Jordan. And talking about deities, you don’t have to be surprised if an old church built in 1885 has been converted into a high-performance basketball facility.

The Church of Epiphany, a dismissed church in the West Loop of Chicago, has been transformed by Nike into a cultural hub dedicated to basketball, and also headquarter for the Just Do It program. The old church has been converted into a “state-of-the-art basketball facility”, that means the best of the best that a sports structure can offer, with regular hardwood, custom floor markings, stained glass windows, high-accessorized lockers, and an integrated weight room.

The new Nike Just Do It headquarter will be used to help the development of local talents, as the Windy City has always been a forge for NBA players. On the other hand, when places like this have people like Scottie Pippen hanging around - he has already been spotted at the Church of the Epiphany - it almost seems inevitable.