Basketball players need more than strength, speed, and skills to be on top
of their game. Technology, too, can make the difference between a slam
dunk and a stolen ball.
Now, technology and basketball seem to have collided, and some players
are calling foul. At the center of the debate is a new type of ball introduced
over the summer by the National Basketball Association. The NBA season
began last week.
A plastic basketball that’s now the
official ball of the National Basketball
Association undergoes wind tunnel
testing.
Basketballs used in NBA games have long had a leather cover. The new
balls, however, are covered with a special kind of plastic. Spalding, the
company that makes the new balls, insists that thorough tests during
development showed that the synthetic covering performs better than
leather does.
Experiments by scientists in Texas, however, seem to show otherwise. The
researchers suggest that the plastic balls are less bouncy, more likely to
bounce off course, and more slippery when moistened with sweat. These
early experimental results suggest that this change in ball design could
have a big effect on the quality of game play.
To compare friction, or the ball’s ability to stick to surfaces (such as
hands), the scientists took measurements as they slid both old and new
balls against sheets of silicon. Silicon is similar to the palms of our hands
in its degree of stickiness.
When dry, the old leather balls slid more easily than did the new plastic
balls. When moistened with just one drop of a sweat-like liquid, however,
the plastic balls became a lot more slippery than when they were dry.
Leather balls actually became stickier with sweat. And they absorbed
moisture about eight times more quickly than the plastic balls did.
“When the balls are dry, the synthetic ball is easier to grip, and when
they’re wet, the leather one is much easier to grip,” says physicist James
L. Horwitz of the University of Texas-Arlington.
To keep professional players from dropping the ball, it may be necessary to
change and clean balls throughout a game.
Some scientists are urging the NBA to reconsider the switch until
scientists finish further testing.
John J. Fontanella, a former college basketball player are now a physicist
at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., belongs to that
group. “The NBA,” he says, “should stick with the leather basketball for
another year.”
