Shaq no fan of NBA's new ball

MIAMI - Heat center Shaquille O'Neal is no fan of the new basketballs to be used by the NBA this season, and isn't afraid to say so.

"I think the new ball is terrible," O'Neal said Monday. "It's the worst decision some expert, whoever did it, made. ... The NBA's been around how long? A hundred years? Fifty years? So to change it now, whoever that person is needs his college degree revoked. It's a terrible decision."

It's only the second time in 60 seasons the NBA has changed its game balls, and the first time in 35 years.
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The new model, the league said in a release, "is a microfiber composite with moisture management that provides superior grip and feel throughout the course of a game."

O'Neal, along with many of his Heat teammates, strongly disagree.

"Feels like one of those cheap balls that you buy at the toy store, indoor-outdoor balls," O'Neal said. "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. I might get fined for saying that, but so what?"

Other factors cited by the league in changing the ball is so that ones used in games will be uniform throughout the league, and that the leather models needed a breaking-in period that won't be necessary with the composite.

"I don't like it, because it's different," Heat backup center Michael Doleac said. "You get used to something, you don't want to change it. ... But in three years, we'll probably all look back and not be able to imagine playing with anything else."

The new composite will be the third type of ball Heat guard Dwyane Wade will use in four months.

Last season's finals were played with the traditional leather ball, then the FIBA world championships used a ball that was slightly smaller than the NBA model - something Wade spent most of the summer getting familiar with.

"Now I've got to make another adjustment with a ball that I haven't shot with at all and it's going to be a challenge," Wade said. "That means it's going to take a lot of late nights for me, I'll tell you that, to get really adjusted to the ball because I have no choice."

Wade said the biggest complaint players have with the new ball is the slippage factor, as in how much grip will be lost when players' hands sweat and that moisture gets on the ball.

"Hopefully over time, you'll hear nothing about it and we'll all stop complaining," Wade said. "But I think rebounds are going to go up this year. All around the league, I think there's going to be a lot of bricks thrown up there early on."

Michael Doleac talked some sense

NEW YORK (AP) -- The NBA is convinced it is playing with a better basketball this season -- no matter what Shaquille O'Neal thinks.

The old leather balls are being replaced by a microfiber composite model, the league's first change in 35 years, and O'Neal isn't impressed. The Miami Heat star blasted the ball Monday, criticizing not only the product but whoever was involved in the decision to use it.

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One of those people, executive vice president of basketball operations Stu Jackson, defended the ball Tuesday.

"Sure you hear some comments that aren't as positive as the overwhelming majority of people that we tested the ball with," Jackson said. "That's going to happen. Everyone that handles the ball loves the grip and the feel of the ball."

Not O'Neal, who said the ball "feels like one of those cheap balls that you buy at the toy store, indoor-outdoor balls."

Both O'Neal and Dwyane Wade griped about the ball's slick grip when wet, and two-time reigning MVP Steve Nash said the ball has a tacky feel that's making shooting and certain types of passes tricky.

"I certainly won't have to lick my fingers. The ball sticks to your hand. It's a big transition. It's extremely sticky," Nash said Tuesday in a conference call from the Phoenix Suns' training camp in Italy.

The ball looks noticeably different, too: Manufactured by Spalding, it features only two interlocking panels -- imagine a pair of hands with the fingers laced together -- rather than the eight panels found on traditional basketballs.

Nash said it will be a difficult transition, but sounded as though he expected players to figure it out.

"We do have a month to get it going," he said. "Right now I would say that the basketball sticks to the floor, it sticks to the backboard. It is different."

Jackson said no matter what the players say, the new ball's grip is an improvement, even when wet.

"If you moisturize a leather ball, it also feels very slick," he said. "But this new ball has a better grip when it's wet than a leather ball."

Players have already had plenty of exposure to the new ball, which was sent to all teams after the All-Star break and to all players over the summer.

Most players were probably exposed to it even before that. The ball was used in events at the last two All-Star games, which O'Neal played in, and was tested in summer league and D-League play. It is also used at the amateur levels, so most players grow up using it.

"It's a better ball," Jackson said. "But as a product matter, composite balls are used in every league throughout the world. And they've been used in every level of play over the last 10 years domestically in the NCAA and also in high school."

Jackson said O'Neal would not be fined for his outburst, in which he said that the person who decided to change the ball "needs his college degree revoked." But he did say that the change would not have been made if there were many similar complaints when the ball was tested.

"We would have pulled the ball," Jackson said.

Of seven Heat players interviewed about the new ball at the team's media day Monday and after practice Tuesday, not one preferred it to the old leather model. Certainly not Shaq, who took a spinning jump hook in the lane, about six feet from the basket. But the ball slipped in his hand and went straight up in the air -- without moving toward the hoop at all.

It was one of three times Shaq lost the handle in a span of about 15 minutes.

"I'm right with him," Heat coach Pat Riley said. "I think it's horrible. ... It really does feel like an indoor-outdoor ball. We'll see how it works. Maybe they'll learn to love it, I don't know."

AP sports writer Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this report.