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Phil Jackson confirms that NBA teams have been deflating basketballs for decades

Kelly Dwyer
Phil Jackson confirms that NBA teams have been deflating basketballs for decades

As with most things related to the NFL, especially around the time of the Super Bowl, discussions centered on the New England Patriots’ role in “Deflategate” turned out to be a pointless and rather stupid exercise. The Pats may have deflated footballs before a playoff game. We think, not sure. And the NFL probably won’t punish the Patriots for breaking the rules because the league’s commissioner is good pals with the New England owner, as if every member of the league’s crew of One Percenters hasn’t already broken bread on a club sandwich lunch together prior to leaving a one percent tip for the server.

In the NBA, this practice has been going on for years. Teams routinely push the limits of the 7.5 to 8.5 pounds of pressure per square inch mark that the league insists upon. Squads either deaden basketballs or pump them to the limits in hopes that the referees won’t find out, the opposing players won’t complain, and to ensure that the ball suits their particular strengths as a club.

That’s their hope, at least. Whether any of this works is up for discussion. There really isn’t a whole hell of a lot of difference between 7.5 and 8.5 PSI, but things may have been a bit more cavalier in the past.

On Wednesday, Todd Radon found this bit of trivia, as penned up by Sam Smith – then of the Chicago Tribune. He was talking with Phil Jackson, in the years that Jackson was known as “former Knick player, Phil Jackson,” and before he came assistant and then head coach of the Chicago Bulls:

For those that don’t want to squint, Mike Prada at SB Nation tracked down the original article in full:

"To help ensure that, we'd try to take some air out of the ball. You see, on the ball it says something like 'inflate to 7 to 9 pounds.' We'd all carry pins and take the air out to deaden the ball.

"It also helped our offense because we were a team that liked to pass the ball without dribbling it, so it didn't matter how much air was in the ball. It also kept other teams from running on us because when they'd dribble the ball, it wouldn't come up so fast."

Those Knicks were slow and undersized even by the standards of their era, but the team overcame that on the way to two championships by utilizing superior passing, touch and timing.

These are very heavy. I will not stand for this. (Getty Images)
These are very heavy. I will not stand for this. (Getty Images)

 

Unnerved by the idea that he would possibly be linked to an execrable type like Bill Belichick, Phil Jackson hopped on Twitter to defend his team’s practices.

As noted above, the rules call for a 7.5 to 8.5 PSI count, and not 7 to 9. We don’t know if things were different in the early 1970s, pre-inflation (holy cow, that’s funny), but by today’s standards Phil’s lucky “7” would be out of legal line.

From there, then we got to chortle on about things that were never proven. Because sports, that’s why.

As coach of the New York Knicks and Miami Heat, Pat Riley was rumored to insist upon over-inflating basketballs because he wanted to encourage long rebounds. This seems a bit odd, because while his Knicks and Heat team featured great and bruising rebounders, they weren’t the sort of athletes that made their living off of chasing down massive caroms some 15-20 feet away from the rim. Add in the knowledge that those teams sometimes went ice cold from the perimeter, and you’d wonder why Riley would keep up the practice he also supposedly used while coaching in Los Angeles – where Magic Johnson was rumored to like a highly-inflated basketball because it helped him with his high dribble.

Then again, we’ve also heard rumors that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (working with Riley’s Lakers), preferred a deadened ball.

This was also tossed around:

John Stockton certainly had a relatively high dribble, but he was also six or seven inches shorter than Magic (the ball didn’t have to travel as far after bouncing back up) and working with massive hands while he orchestrated the Jazz offense.

Mike Prada also busted out his copy of Sam Smith’s ‘The Jordan Rules’ to find this gem, with Phil Jackson once again going on record:

"Like that night in Miami in the 1989-90 season. Jackson always tests the poundage in the game balls before the game. The balls that night in Miami were well below the required 7.5 to 8.5 pounds. An innocent oversight? Unlikely. With a softer ball players can't dribble as fast and the game slows. It was what a less talented team like Miami wanted against a running team like the Bulls. Jackson got the balls pumped up and the Heat were deflated.

It works the way other, too; Jackson has caught the Lakers trying to sneak balls with 15 to 17 pounds of air into the game.

Come on, 15 to 17 pounds? Basketballs are pretty damn bouncy at 8.5, Phil is telling Smith that the Lakers doubled that mark? That’s akin to saying you measured Mickey Mantle hitting a home run 900 feet at an outdoor exhibition game in the middle of Oklahoma. Hitting it 450 feet is impressive enough, guys.

We’ll never be able to agree on who did what, for what reason, and if any of this actually worked.

What we can all agree on is that this is all so incredibly stupid. Watch the Puppy Bowl instead.

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Kelly Dwyer

is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!