🏀 The NBA Is Getting a New Ball (Exclusive)

I am many things:

• Smart

• Creative

• A viral sensation

• Humble

But what I am certainly not is an engineer.

In fact, the closest I’ve ever come to the STEM field at all was the one semester I spent in the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Science.

It is there I learned that being called “doctor” is way cooler than studying to become an actual doctor. So I did what any bright-eyed young kid would do:

I decided to study marketing.

Nowhere has my ineptitude for STEM been more clear than when I joined a call with the consultant and account manager responsible for creating Wilson’s Airless Basketball.

But first, some background:

🏀 Wilson worked with a 3D printing company called EOS to develop and print a basketball that doesn’t need to be inflated.

🏅This ball was used in the 2023 NBA Dunk Contest by Kenyon Martin Jr. 

⚙️ EOS, the company responsible for printing the ball, usually makes parts for medical devices and rocket ships.

🖨 The ball is printed using a 3D printing technique called “additive manufacturing” which is a fancy way of saying a 3D shape is made by printing 2D layers on top of one another.

So now you’re caught up, but this is where things get good…

Because after my initial video on the making of this ball and what it means for the future of basketball went viral (humble brag), and was picked up by outlets like ESPN and NBA on TNT…

The team at EOS responsible for engineering this ball reached out and gave me almost an hour of their time to pepper them with questions (huge mistake).

Here are the cliff notes (paraphrased):

Q1: Was this all just a marketing gimmick?

Jon Walker, Government Relations and Key Accounts Manager at EOS: 

No, it’s meant to address issues around:

• Having consistent inflation of balls (*cough* Deflate-gate)

• Ease of use for consumers (you no longer need an air pump)

• Optimization for better play (we make golf balls better, why not make basketballs better?)

• Sustainability (the ball can be made out of fully recyclable materials)

Q2: How close is this thing to being sold to the mass market?

Dave Krzeminski, Ph.D., Senior Additive Minds Consultant for EOS:

A ways away. The short answer is that Wilson hasn’t built up the production capacity yet and EOS can only make ~1 ball per day.

But this idea has been about five years in the making and has gone through many iterations to create a perfectly spherical ball that looks, feels, and plays like the current NBA ball.

At the height of prototyping, EOS was printing one ball every weekday to get it ready for the Dunk Contest (they had about a 60-day heads up that they had been selected to make the ball).

Q3: The holes in the ball have to affect its aerodynamics, right?

Dave Krzeminski, Ph.D., Senior Additive Minds Consultant for EOS:

Well yes, but that’s on purpose. The reason we settled on holes in the ball was because that’s how we could get it to play like an actual basketball.

But the team went through several iterations, and if Wilson wanted it to not have holes in it they’d have to go through several more.

The fact of the matter is that even the slightest logo tweak on the ball can affect how it bounces and feels, so it’s not as easy as “just putting a skin over the ball” or “filling in the holes.”

That would add exponential complexity to the printing process and cause the ball to not as closely resemble the current NBA ball.

Q4: How will this ball impact the game of basketball?

Jon Walker, Government Relations and Key Accounts Manager at EOS: 

In golf, we tinker with the golf ball to make it fly as far and as straight as possible.

In other sports, like basketball, the design hasn’t changed in years. A newly designed ball could change the way the game is played by allowing for a more consistent feel, more uniform bounces, a longer shooting range…

The possibilities are truly endless, which is the point Wilson and EOS are trying to make.

Why not rethink what the basketball could be?

Q5: What happens if a rock gets in the ball?

*call ended*

In all seriousness, Dave and Jon were awesome to talk to and I feel like now know 1% more about the engineering that went into creating this design marvel.

Maybe I should go back to school…

👋 Happy Masters’ Weekend, friends (please read in Jim Nantz’s voice).