In June of 2006, the NBA announced the first change to the ball in over 35 years and only the second in the league’s 60-year history – The New Ball. Made in conjunction with the NBA’s official partner Spalding, the New Ball was supposed to vault the NBA into the future of sporting technology, swapping out old-timey leather in favor of a microfiber composite material. After two years of preparation, Commissioner David Stern excitedly introduced the New Ball at a launch event in New York City. “The advancements that Spalding has made to the new game ball ensure that the best basketball players in the world will be playing with the best basketball in the world,” said Stern. While NBA and Spalding executives reveled in the success of the launch event, their enthusiasm would be shortlived.
Instead of the traditional eight-panel leather ball, the New Ball was made of proprietary Cross Traxxion™ material with an interlocking cross-panel design. They were cheaper to produce than leather balls and were supposed to feel broken in right from the jump. By the early 2000s, several high school and college leagues had already adopted the synthetic ball. From Spalding’s point of view, it was time the NBA looked toward the future of sports technology as well.
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In the summer of 2006, the NBA sent a New Ball to every player in the league so they could begin practicing with it. Almost immediately, many players raised their concerns about the New Ball. “Right off the rim when I first started gripping it, I didn’t like it,” said 14-year NBA veteran Stephen Jackson. “It felt like plastic.” When the New Ball arrived at training camps in October, the NBA quickly had a full-scale P.R. nightmare on its hands. Several of the league’s premiere talents including Shaquille O’Neal, Dirk Nowitzki, and league MVP Steve Nash didn’t mince words when asked about the ball.
“Terrible,” O’Neal said three weeks before the season began. “It feels like one of those cheap balls you buy at the toy store. I look for shooting percentages to be way down and turnovers to be way up because when the ball gets wet you can’t really control it. Whoever did that needs to be fired. It was terrible, a terrible decision. Awful.”
The New Ball rapidly became the biggest storyline throughout the first few months of the 2006-07 season. Common complaints about the ball were that it became slippery when wet, it didn’t bounce as well as the leather ball, and its surface had more friction, which led to players getting cuts on their hands. “I have to constantly put lotion all over my hands because my fingers are cracking and it’s causing splits on my fingertips,” said sharpshooter Ray Allen.
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Despite these concerns from the players, Commissioner Stern continued to insist that the New Ball was better. He emphasized efficiency: the synthetic balls were a solution to what Spalding described as a shortage of “reliable leather” and the time-consuming process of breaking in leather balls for game use.
“I think that some of the dramatics around it was a little overstated in terms of the downside and not enough recognition of the upside,” Stern told reporters on the NBA’s preseason tour of Europe. “Within certain parameters of the way you want a ball to perform again and again and again, it is performing extraordinarily well…. It doesn’t mean it feels the same; it may not even bounce exactly the same. It may do all the things that everyone says it may or may not do, but it’s a very good ball and the tests continue to demonstrate that it’s an improvement.”
But what were those parameters? Who conducted the tests? And what exactly did Stern mean by “extraordinarily well”? As more of the story around the New Ball emerged, the stranger it looked. Prior to its widespread introduction, the New Ball was used during the two previous NBA All-Star weekends, as well as in the 2004-05 D-League season. Spalding also had retired players Reggie Miller, Steve Kerr, and Mark Jackson test the ball. Current NBA players, however, were never actually consulted regarding the change.
This was one of several instances of executive overreach during David Stern’s tenure as Commissioner. This somewhat autocratic period of the NBA also saw Stern institute a business casual dress code for players, oversee what many consider an avoidable lockout in 2011, and veto the trade that would have sent Chris Paul to the Lakers. Regarding the New Ball, few expected Stern to admit he’d made a mistake.
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As someone who’s never afraid to stir the pot, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wondered if scientific data could back up the players’ claims. Cuban requested the University of Texas at Austin’s physics department compare the old and new basketballs. The results of the study backed up much of what the players had been saying. While the cause of the reported cuts could not be explained, the study found that the New Ball bounced five to eight percent lower when dropped from four feet. Additionally, the New Ball bounced 30 percent more erratically than its leather counterpart.
“The two balls were almost identical when they were dry,” said UT-Austin physics professor Kaushik De. “But the leather ball changed very little when it got wet, whereas the rubber ball became very slippery. It’s like driving on a dry road versus driving on an icy road: The results are going to be disastrous when you try to drive the same way on an icy road that you would on a dry road.”
On December 1, the NBA Players Association filed two unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Ten days later, and a mere three months after the New Ball was first used in an NBA game, the league announced that they would return to the old ball. The decision blindsided Spalding, whose executives found out via the breaking news reports circulating in the media. Surely David Stern must’ve seen the irony in admitting to poor communication with the players when introducing the ball just to have equally poor communication with one of the league’s biggest partners when getting rid of the ball.
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In hindsight, the New Ball’s tumultuous reign from October to December had little impact on the greater landscape of the NBA. Despite Shaquille O’Neal’s predictions, shooting percentages rose and league scoring increased by 2.5 points per game on average with the New Ball. The true issue wasn’t that the game worsened because of the New Ball, or even that it may have been leading to cuts on players’ hands. The NBA made a drastic change directly affecting the workplace without any consultation with the labor force. By forcing the league’s hand to revert to the old ball, the NBA Players Association secured a win for collective labor action against high-handed executives.
“He understands where we were coming from,” said LeBron James the day after Stern announced the return of the old ball. “For the league to be successful, the players have to be happy.” This should have been fairly obvious, considering that professional athletes represent both the labor and the product of their industry. However, the bloodied fingers of history suggest that much like the synthetic basketball, this concept was not always easy to grasp.
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