Attending an NBA game is full of unique and overwhelming experiences, from noticing players not paying attention during timeouts to video-board interviews in which the team's cheerleaders discuss their favorite foods. One of the most popular bits of in-arena entertainment is the T-shirt toss, which finds mascots and hype-team members throwing or shooting very thin, oversized, sponsored T-shirts to rabid fans. It's a new tradition right up there with the Kiss Cam, giving away fast food for scoring milestones, and playing songs from "Watch the Throne" during possessions.
But couldn't the T-shirt toss be even better? The Philadelphia 76ers think so. In order to bring their fans the best T-shirt experience possible, they have just unveiled the biggest T-shirt cannon in the world. It even has a name. From the press release (via TBJ and The 700 Level):
On opening night, the Sixers will unveil Big Bella, the world's largest T-shirt launcher that fires 100 tees in just 60 seconds. Big Bella weighs 600 pounds and, when firing T-shirts into the upper reaches of the Wells Fargo Center, can be up to 10 feet high. The team commissioned the creation of Big Bella from FX in Motion, an entertainment elements company out of New Berlin, Wisc. The team will also drop T-shirts, free game tickets and other promotional items from the rafters of the Wells Fargo Center down to fans below in a new themed "Sixers Parachute Drop."
A typical T-shirt toss involves maybe 20 shirts in a minute, with the tossers cruelly forcing various parts of the crowd to make as much noise as possible so that they might deign to throw a shirt in their general direction. With Big Bella, though, the Sixers can now unleash an all-out T-shirt assault on the crowd, firing rubber-banded shirts wherever they please with the force of an artillery shell. I mean, just look at all the barrels on that thing. It's like alien weaponry from a work of science fiction.
The biggest question here, though, is exactly how the Sixers plan to implement Big Bella. If they use her for every T-shirt toss, it's possible that they will run out of money from having to print up so much stock, even with greater discounts for larger orders. Plus, is it even feasible to use Bella every time? I'm not sure fans can handle that much power!
I just hope there isn't a major crisis. These are issues Andrew Bynum never considered when he demanded the world's largest T-shirt cannon following his arrival in Philadelphia.
(Photo via @Sixers on Twitter)
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