Board Room Gift Ideas

Every piece on this shelf is cut from a floor a title was won on — a bottle opener, a desk trophy, a framed three-pointer, an ornament. The wood is the gift; the object is just what somebody did with it.

It is also the answer to one specific problem: the fan who has already been given every obvious thing. There is no size to get wrong here and mostly no team to choose, which makes these the easiest pieces in the room to buy for somebody you know a little less well, and the hardest to accidentally buy twice.

The far return is the same championship court cut smaller still: a desk frame, a pendant, a brooch. Sized to wear, or to stand next to a keyboard.

It is a short list because it is a short line. Everything on it is one idea at a different scale, which makes it the right shelf for somebody who liked the mini court but has no desk to put one on.

The right-hand tank holds one figure. The line behind it runs to sixteen — current players and legends, most of them standing on a base cut from game-used court.

This is the one shelf in the room where the person matters more than the team. A figure is a specific player, and a fan with three jerseys in the wardrobe still has only one favourite. Get that name right and very little else about this gift can go wrong. Get it wrong and the object has nowhere to sit.

The legends are the safer end if you are buying for somebody whose fandom predates your own — Magic, Iverson, Shaq. A person who watched those four play does not need the current roster explained to them, and will notice that you knew that.

The left-hand tank holds a pair of skate decks, and the pair is the product — the artwork is printed across both boards, so one on its own is half a picture.

They are not for skating. At 8 by 32 inches each they hang as a diptych, and the line runs to twelve players: current names alongside Magic, Ewing, Robinson, Rodman and Wilkins. That mix is the useful part, because it lets you buy for somebody whose favourite player stopped playing before the person buying was watching.

Hanging hardware is sold separately, which is worth knowing before it arrives.

The board on the back wall is the room's least obvious idea and its largest.

These are artworks on a backboard, 72 by 36 inches, each by a named artist — forty-two of them, no two the same. They hang as wall art rather than as memorabilia, and that is the whole point of the format: the shape reads as basketball while the surface reads as a print, so the piece works on a wall where a framed jersey would not.

It is not a small gift and it does not pretend to be. What it suits is the person who already owns everything in the other five bays, or a room that needs one large thing on a wall instead of several small ones.

Choose by the artwork rather than by the crest. Most of these are not about a team at all.