9 Things to Know About the Life of an NBA Basketball

Turns out Tom Brady might not be the only one deflating balls.

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There's an excellent new story up on ESPN.com about how basketballs make it from the factory to the NBA Finals. For starters, a ball begins as a leather shipment of 50,000-square feet to China from Chicago's Horween Leather Company. It has a long way to go from there. "If you take the new balls out of the box ... and you shoot for an hour, the tips of your fingers will be bloody, just because the thread is so new," Eric Housen, the Golden State Warriors equipment/travel manager told ESPN's Baxter Holmes.

Here are 9 things we learned about NBA game balls from the article:

1. Before each game, a referee presents three balls to one player from each team (LeBron James for the Cavaliers, Steph Curry for the Warriors before Game 2 on Sunday). They must agree on a game ball.

2. Horween's produces the leather for NBA basketballs and for NFL footballs. The company gets the leather mostly from Iowa and Ontario, Canada.

3. Each ball takes three to four square feet of leather to make.

4. A 1,000-ton press with German embossing plates create the basketball's signature dots.

5. About 3,200 yards of Japanese nylon forms the outside of the inflated bladder. Then the inner sphere is covered with Malaysian and Vietnamese rubber. Eight leather panels are then glued together by hand.

6. Marv Albert said Bill Bradley had his teammates huddle around him before the game where he'd use a needle to deflate the game ball to his preference. Shaquille O'Neal did the same so he could palm it like Michael Jordan. Ditto to Phil Jackson while on the 1973 NBA Champion Knicks team.

7. NBA players mark the balls with dots, smiley faces, small skulls, or an X to keep their favorite balls in circulation.

8. In 2006, the NBA changed its game ball for the first time in 35 years to a microfiber composite from the leather. Steve Nash, then a Phoenix Suns point guard and two-time MVP, wore bandages because the ball cut his fingers. The balls lasted two months.

9. One executive remembers a point guard who, during one game, hated the ball so he "passed" it to a fan holding a beer. When the beer spilled on the ball, it had to be replaced.

Read the whole story here. Well worth it.

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