Situated in the heart of Nike’s worldwide headquarters in Oregon, Nike has officially unveiled the newest Lebron James Innovation Center, with the top floor housing Nike’s Sports Research Lab.

The new building named after four-time NBA champion and four-time NBA MVP, who’s been sponsored by Nike since 2003, aims to provide greater space for athletes in order to generate research breakthroughs that enhance performance.

Described by Forbes, the 84,000-square-foot space features a full-size NBA basketball court, a 200-meter fatigue track, a 100-meter track with two lanes of track and field surface and a lane of concrete, a one-third-size regulation soccer field with artificial turf and outside the budling a 500-foot long 15.63% incline ramp.

The space is fully calibrated to capture data from 400 motion-capture cameras and 97 force plate pits, which is the largest of their kind according to Nike. 

Nike’s Sport Research Lab vice president, Dr. Matthew Nurse, told Forbes: “One of the things this facility unlocks is the ability to see more diverse athletes in more diverse sports at full speed in the ways they want to compete, train and recover, in ways we never have before.”

“This space allows us to do research on teams just showing up and doing five-on-five.

“They can just play.

“If you need to train or recover, everything is here and everything is captured. 

“It is a new way to bring people in to study things,” said Nurse.

The 825 pieces of testing equipment and four environmental chambers, allows for innovative testing across several sports, both on the athlete or product. 

Where the volume of space in the Innovation Center is used to curate data, Nurse says the lab will be used to provide solutions for sports performance that are either “measurably or palpably better.”