Slam dunk for leather
09/09/2008
The NBA will use leather basketballs in its developmental league next season, temporarily ending its attempts to reintroduce a composite ball at the NBA level, a league official has confirmed.
“We are committed to leather for the foreseeable future,” league spokesman Tim Frank told sports broadcaster ESPN. “We just realised leather is what our guys wanted.”That means equipment manufacturer Spalding will remain one of two companies manufacturing a leather basketball. Molten also produces a leather ball for the sport’s international body, FIBA.
In many leagues throughout the world, and in most college and high school conferences in the US, teams use balls made of synthetic material because they're less expensive to produce and provide more consistency from ball to ball. The NBA introduced a composite ball at the start of the 2006-07 season, but after complaints from players that the balls became slick from perspiration and left tiny cuts on their fingertips, the league returned to leather in January 2007.
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