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December 06, 2006
Does anyone else get the feeling this new microfiber basketball is about to become the NBA's version of New Coke?
In fact, that's probably how commissioner David Stern should spin the league's latest blunder: We purposely introduced a substandard ball, so everyone would better appreciate the leather model, which, from now on, will be called Spalding Classic.
Stern should forget about sending the new ball back to Spalding for more tests -- as he told the NY Times Tuesday -- and go back to leather by the end of the month. The ball has already been tested enough by the only people whose opinions matter: the players. And the results are clear: It sucks.
"It's like brussel sprouts," Pop said. "No one likes it."
Pop told the officials rather curtly to sub out the ball in the first quarter of Monday's game against Golden State after it twice became pinned between the rim and backboard. They didn't.
Anyone who watched the Spurs' near collapse in the second half of Saturday's game against Sacramento can't tell me the new ball didn't factor into a few of those turnovers. Brent Barry went up for a dunk only to have the ball shoot out of his hands. Tim Duncan, who has repeatedly expressed his distaste for the ball, had trouble dribbling.
"I don't know if it was just wet by the end of the game," Barry said, "but it was definitely one of those nights where some strange things happened. Do we chalk it up to the ball? I don't know. But I hadn't seen plays like that with the other ball."
