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How much is an official nba basketball
How Much Does an Authentic NBA Game Ball Cost?
Today’s NBA is one of the most entertaining athletic spectacles there is. World-class superstars like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Steph Curry fly up and down the court with incredible precision, grace, and athleticism. But as you’re watching these players play, how often do you consider the tools they are using?
Have you ever considered what an NBA game ball is made out of, who produces it, and how much money it’s worth? It’s probably more than you think. Let’s take a closer look at the ridiculous amount that one NBA game ball costs.
An NBA basketball on the court before a game | Gene Sweeney Jr./Getty Images
The history of the NBA basketball
While a lot of equipment goes into the NBA game, there’s no single piece of equipment more important than the ball. And that piece of equipment has a history nearly as old as the game itself.
The first basketball ever used wasn’t a basketball at all. When Dr. James Naismith developed the game in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts, he had the first players use a soccer ball to play the game.
Naismith then went to A.G. Spalding and asked him to design a ball specifically for this game. The game’s official rules Naismith wrote mandated that Spalding make all official balls used for the sport.
How the basketball has evolved throughout the years
Spalding designed the first synthetic leather basketball in 1972. In 1983, Spalding’s basketball became the official basketball of the NBA. In 1992, Spalding introduced the composite leather basketball, which had a lighter touch but also added durability.
Finally in 1997, Spalding became the official ball of the WNBA — this ball resembled the NBA’s ball, only it was orange and white instead of solid orange.
Spalding’s name is essentially synonymous with the NBA and WNBA now. It’s also synonymous with the idea of playing basketball for many young hoopers who play in elementary, middle, and high school as well as in college.
But while many people probably think the basketballs used professionally are the same standard-issue balls used in gyms all around the country, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
How much does an authentic NBA game ball cost?
The cost of an authentic, game-ready NBA basketball is probably way more than you think. It’s also way more than what you’d drop walking into a sporting goods store to buy most kinds of basketball.
A Spalding replica ball retails at $59.99. At most sporting goods stores, you can get an indoor basketball for probably around $30. If you guessed either of those prices for how much an actual NBA game ball costs, you’d be way off. According to the Spalding website, an official NBA game ball costs $169.99.
The Spalding website advertises the following features of their NBA game basketballs:
Official NBA size and weight: Size 7, 29. 5″
Full-grain Horween leather cover
Ships inflated
Designed for indoor play only
What does this mean? It means Spalding puts a lot of resources into the NBA’s actual balls – more than the resources that go into the basketballs that hit the shelves of most sporting goods retailers. You can obviously buy one of these, but they’re a lot less readily available than those other modestly-priced basketballs.
One important distinction? The ball is marked for indoor play only. Many Spalding balls double as indoor/outdoor balls that can be used in either setting. These are custom-made to be used on NBA hardwood floors. Using them anywhere else could do significant damage to the ball.
While it’s true the NBA basketball is a bit pricier than the average ball, for the cost mentioned above you can have one of your own. Just be sure to take good care of it and not use it outdoors as it could be damaged — and you’ll be $169.99 lighter.
Wilson reveals NBA official game ball in advance of 2021-22 NBA season
Wilson, which was the official game ball for the league’s first 37 seasons, returns to the NBA.
CHICAGO, June 17, 2021 — Wilson Sporting Goods Co., in partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA), today unveiled the league’s new official game ball in advance of the NBA’s 75th anniversary season. The reveal tips off a multiyear partnership, welcoming the NBA’s first official basketball manufacturer – Wilson – back to the game.
The Wilson NBA official game ball is comprised of the same materials, eight-panel configuration and performance specifications as the league’s current game balls and sources the same leather currently used in the NBA. Over the past year, the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) worked jointly with Wilson to develop and approve the new game ball through team evaluation sessions. The game ball features the iconic NBA and Wilson logos in full grain pebbling, with the Wilson logo also including an anthracite inline.
“Wilson is excited to unlock our history and heritage with the NBA to grow the game of basketball on the global stage,” said Kevin Murphy, General Manager, Wilson Team Sports. “On the heels of launching our WNBA and BAL partnerships, we will continue building for the future of the sport. Wilson will focus first on supporting the league and its players with its high-performance game balls, then extending our basketball family to reach fans, coaches and players at all levels, around the world.”
“Our partnership with Wilson fittingly comes to life as we approach our 75th anniversary season,” said Salvatore LaRocca, NBA President, Global Partnerships. “As the NBA’s official game ball for the league’s first 37 seasons, Wilson makes its return building on our shared history and looking ahead toward the continued growth of the league.”
Wilson’s NBA official game ball will make its on-court debut at the Microsoft Surface NBA Draft Combine 2021, scheduled to take place Monday, June 21 through Sunday, June 27. The game ball will be available for purchase exclusively on wilson.com in the U.S. beginning July 29, in alignment with the NBA Draft 2021 presented by State Farm. Additional NBA-licensed Wilson products will be made available through key retail partners globally including NBAStore.com, Amazon and others throughout the summer.
To coincide with the game ball reveal, Wilson is also introducing its first NBA Advisory Staff members – 2020 NBA All-Star Trae Young and 2016 first-round NBA Draft pick Jamal Murray. As official Wilson Advisory Staff members, Young and Murray will playtest, provide feedback and collaborate on Wilson basketball products.
“Joining Wilson’s Advisory Staff was such a natural fit for me,” said Young. “I’ve been using their basketballs since I was a kid – from hooping in my driveway to playing throughout college. It’s exciting to see Wilson return to the NBA, and for me to have a voice in how they show up both on and off the court.”
Trae Young
Jamal Murray
Young and Murray join a growing roster of Wilson Basketball Advisory Staff members, including three-time WNBA All-Star Liz Cambage, FIBA 3×3 stars Dušan Bulut and Migna Touré, renowned skills coach Chris Brickley and tastemaker Beija Velez, with more players expected to be announced as the season approaches.
Wilson’s partnership milestones with the NBA will continue to roll out throughout 2021 with announcements and activations across the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), NBA G League, NBA 2K League and Basketball Africa League (BAL), and into the NBA’s 75th anniversary season.
NBA parting ways with the legendary Spalding. Why did the basketball turn orange? - Bank shot - Blogs
Editor's Note: This text was released on Sports.ru on September 10, 2019. We lift it up because today is the end of an era: the NBA has stopped working with Spalding, whose balls have accompanied the league since '83.
Today the ball is the most recognizable part of basketball. But initially it was not so.
When, on the morning of December 21, 1891, James Naismith, a physical instructor at Springfield College, fired up with a new idea, came to work, he did not particularly think about what qualities the projectile should have. All he understood was that for the new game he invented, he needed a large ball. So he tried on two football versions - for rugby and for soccer. The rugby ball is elongated so that it can be carried in the hands, but the rules of the new game just prohibited it, so he took the round one.
The third rule in Namesit's legendary manifesto was: A player may not run with the ball. He must throw it from the place where he caught it; some movement is allowed if the ball was caught at high speed.
At first, the students played only in this way - they could either pass or roll the ball on the ground. Dribbling was first used by students at Yale University in 1897, and from there it spread throughout the world. At first, only one hit to the floor could be made, from 1909 the restrictions were lifted. In 1903, players who dribbled were banned from throwing until 1915.
And throughout the first third of the 20th century, basketball purists did not stop trying to fight this heretical change in Naismith's 13 commandments.
This was partly logical - and due to the fact that the game balls themselves were completely unsuitable for crossovers, shamgods and other Enduan things.
Basketball was first played with soccer balls .
The first basketball was made in the mid-90s by the bicycle factory Overman Wheel Co. from Massachusetts. It was lighter and larger than the soccer ball that had been played before.
And in the late 1890s, Naismith asked AJ Spaulding to develop an improved version of the basketball. True, even this was not very even, not very round and had lacing, which made dribbling difficult. In addition, such balls were 7-8 centimeters larger in diameter than modern ones, and much heavier than .
Well, they traditionally had an unpleasant dark brown color.
Naturally, basketball players were most infuriated by lacing, so Chuck Taylor could not ignore this problem. The founding father of Chuck Taylor All-Stars has always claimed to have played for professional and semi-pro teams for 11 years. And although this fact from his biography is poorly documented, it is obvious that he was rather tired of the crooked ball. In 1935, his company began to produce not only basketball shoes, but also released the first ball without lacing. Both the Converse All Star sneakers and the changed shell - for greater stability it now consisted of eight parts, and not four - at the official level akin to basketball in the next thirty years.
An unobvious moment: many people were convinced that a basketball has a natural color, skin color. In fact, this is not so: it was artificially dyed and given the traditional brown color.
Many players didn't like her, especially those with vision problems. But to make a radical change, it took the intervention of television.
In the mid-1950s, the TV crew insisted that the ball was hard to see from the stands and not very good on the television picture, and insisted on changing the color scheme . By 1957, it was decided that the balls would become light brown or even yellow.
And here another Indiana basketball representative had to intervene. Butler varsity head coach Tony Hinkle decided to develop an original color scheme and worked with Spalding to come up with the more radical orange colorway .
The new projectile debuted in the 1958 NCAA Final Four and won everyone over. The NCAA then switched to orange, and all other leagues gradually followed.
However, there has never been any stable variant - for half a century, about 50 gradations of orange / brown / dark brown have been used.
No one pissed off a dark brown ball more than center George Mikan, the first "greatest player in basketball history." To modern fans, he is known mainly for playing with thick glasses, and more like a militant nerd than a basketball player.
“I didn't see this crap at all,” Maikan said. - Then the arenas were even much worse lit, and the ball blended into the background. If you watched basketball on TV, then this shit-colored thing was not particularly visible.
Maikan was helpless to change anything as a player. But in 1967, the NBA had an aggressive competitor - the ABA - and the former bespectacled center was appointed its commission agent. So the first thing he decided to do was throw a brown ball out of the modern ship. The league was called American, and therefore they decided that the new ball would have the color of the American flag .
The owners of the ABA clubs disagreed for a long time: for them, a ball of this color symbolized almost the desecration of the national flag. But then Maikan balked and threatened to resign, and this is how the most legendary ball in the history of basketball appeared. In subsequent years, about 30 million shells of this color were sold in America - however, the ABA forgot to acquire a patent and practically did not earn anything from it.
In the 1980s, this color came back into fashion thanks to the efforts of the Beastie Boys. And it is still not clear why NBA commissioner David Stern, who knows how to make money on everything, tested many of the ABA's marketing moves, but never adopted the red-blue-white ball.
Maybe that's why.
“I came up with a trick that I used exclusively in the ABA,” said Roger Brown, one of the stars of that league. - The feint was associated with the color of the ball. When he spun in the air, he produced a kind of hypnotic effect. So I took the ball and started to twist it, as it were. Some defenders watched this as if spellbound, and one second was enough for me to break away from them.
The George Mikan Revolution not only destroyed the reverence for the traditional color of the ball, but also introduced various questions into the public plane about what qualities a projectile should have in general.
Players and coaches in the ABA constantly complained that the balls were supposedly made of a different material, and therefore slipped too much (this is how they explained the monstrous number of losses in the league).
It took a lot of time and almost specially organized trips to the factories to convince everyone that the only difference is the colors.
No one protested openly in the NBA. But various ancillary measures were taken covertly: for example, Phil Jackson said that his teams - Chicago and the Lakers - dropped balls so that he would not bounce far from the shield and so that Jordan or Shaq could grab him with one hand . He was taught this trick by his Knicks coach Red Holtzman, who himself had been performing since the era of the lace-up ball. And some said that they treated the balls with sandpaper so that they were not so slippery.
With the development of technology, designers have already become the players.
In the 90's there was a pitted version of the golf ball. But they still preferred pimples.
New components and structures have been introduced to wick away moisture so that the ball does not slip in sweaty hands.
With the use of synthetic materials, the color scheme has also become completely chaotic: on the streets you can find balls of a wide variety, from black and orange to the colors of any club.
Only professional leagues stick to the orange/brown tradition and dare to make minimal assumptions.
Photo: Gettyimages.ru/Orlando/Three Lions; Markus Boesch; Otto Greule Jr; Steve Grayson; Streeter Lecka
History of basketballs
What balls are played now and how did it happen?
What balls are played now and how did it happen?
WONDERING WHY WE DO NOT PLAY A FOOTBALL OR A VOLLEYBALL? WHICH BALL DID IT ALL START WITH?
In 1891, James Naismith invented basketball. Then the game was very different from ours. For example, there was a bottom in the baskets and every time after a hit, the ball had to be taken out. Then they also played football ...
In 1891, James Naismith invented basketball. Then the game was very different from ours. For example, there was a bottom in the baskets and every time after a hit, the ball had to be taken out. Then they also played football ...
Anyone who has ever tried to play basketball with a soccer ball knows that this is not the best thing to do. It is inconvenient to handle it in gears and lead. Therefore, 3 years after the first game, the first basketball was invented.
This ball was made of leather strips with a rubber bladder inside and was sewn up with threads on the outside.
By 1929, it was improved: the laces were hidden, and the shape itself was changed for a better and more predictable rebound.
B 1937, lacing disappeared from basketballs, and in 1942 the balls already became similar to ours, they were no longer sewn and they kept their shape better.
Perhaps this had a strong influence on the development of the game, because even in the 50s dribbling was very far from ours. Most of the players then skillfully dribbled with only one hand and very rarely used transfers.
Until the late 1990s, leather was the main material used for balls in professional leagues, but since then it has been increasingly replaced by synthetic materials.
In 2020 there are already balls for every taste and color: plain, multi-colored, small, large, rubber, leather, weighted, recycled plastic and other modern materials.
What balls are currently played:
Mini basketball (under 13s) uses a size 5 ball with a diameter of approximately 70 centimeters and a weight of around 0.48 kg.
Women's basketball uses size 6, diameter 73 cm, weight 0.55 kg.
In men's basketball - size 7, with a diameter of 77 cm and a weight of 0.61 kg.
There is also an exception - 3x3 basketball, where they play with a special ball, which is like a size 6 in diameter, but weighs like a size 7. This was done on purpose so that it would be less affected by the wind outside.
Fun Fact
Since 1970, the NBA has only been played with Spalding balls, but from the 2020-21 season, new Wilson balls will be played.
Playground collaborated with Wilson to make their own ball based on the Wilson Evolution. This ball uses an advanced microfiber coating to help give the ball the best touch feel for all dribbling enthusiasts.
In 1992, Spalding introduced the composite leather basketball, which had a lighter touch but also added durability. 
5″
“On the heels of launching our WNBA and BAL partnerships, we will continue building for the future of the sport. Wilson will focus first on supporting the league and its players with its high-performance game balls, then extending our basketball family to reach fans, coaches and players at all levels, around the world.”
Additional NBA-licensed Wilson products will be made available through key retail partners globally including NBAStore.com, Amazon and others throughout the summer.
All he understood was that for the new game he invented, he needed a large ball. So he tried on two football versions - for rugby and for soccer. The rugby ball is elongated so that it can be carried in the hands, but the rules of the new game just prohibited it, so he took the round one. 
And although this fact from his biography is poorly documented, it is obvious that he was rather tired of the crooked ball. In 1935, his company began to produce not only basketball shoes, but also released the first ball without lacing. Both the Converse All Star sneakers and the changed shell - for greater stability it now consisted of eight parts, and not four - at the official level akin to basketball in the next thirty years. 
It is inconvenient to handle it in gears and lead. Therefore, 3 years after the first game, the first basketball was invented. 
