A new basketball arena just isn’t in the works in the foreseeable future for the University of Alabama men’s basketball team, so head coach Avery Johnson did the next best thing for his program.

With support from the athletic department, Johnson, with help and planning from basketball director of operations Kobie Baker and athletic trainer Clarke Holter, gave the Crimson Tide program a new player's lounge and rehabilitation tools.

Included in the renovated lounge is a black-felt pool table sitting directly under new graphics that are featured nearly all through the facility, including photos of former UA Freshman of the year point guard Mo Williams as both a Crimson Tide player and posing with the NBA Championship trophy he recently helped win last season as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The lounge also features several oversized leather chairs around a television, a space already utilized by the players while watching Alabama football games on Saturday.

In the entrance to the players lounge is a list of 14 former Alabama players selected in the first round of the NBA Draft, a design aimed at grabbing the attention of recruits. At the top of the list are three empty slots for the program’s next three first-rounders.

Then on the athletic training side, Holter showed off the team’s new hot and cold tubs, recently custom built to fit the specifics of the room. They were installed three weeks ago.

The team also showed off its own anti-gravity treadmill, which the football team has had for several seasons now. It allows injured athletes to rehabilitate quicker. The $100,000 treadmill came in handy in point guard’s Dazon Ingram’s rehabilitation last season.

“It was originally built by NASA for cardio workouts with anti-gravity,” Holter said. “In a post-surgical setting, these guys will step into the machine and it will calibrate to the specific athlete.

“Say Dazon gets in here and I want him to get a workout at 50 percent of his body weight it inflates to exactly 50 percent of his body weight. It allows us progress running, functional activity at a much more precise objective weight.”

Holter is also using the Catapult system that the football team has been using, which gives exact metrics of an athlete’s exertion. Those metrics can be used to determine when an athlete may be close to over-exertion, allowing the coaching and training staff to back off when needed.

Reach Aaron Suttles at aaron@tidesports.com or at 205-722-0229.