NBA Commissioner, David Stern, announced today that he’s looking into changing the ball back to the original leather one. He may have done this because of the many complaints around the league from the players, or quite possibly, because the player’s union started to threaten a walkout. He stated in a news conference Tuesday, “It’s an improvement in many ways, but if our players are unhappy with it, we have to analyze to the nth degree the cause of their unhappiness. Many players have been outspoken about how the ball is harder to handle, bounces differently on the floor and on the rims, and field goal percentage is down all the way across the board…

In every business class, you hear about the New Coke fiasco in 1985. They decided to release a Coke that had a better taste and did away with the old one. Public demand at the time heavily favored to the original Coca Cola Classic. In turn the original product was re-released and the company flourished. Claimed as one of the best marketing gimmicks of all time!

While reading about the new NBA ball for the past few months, I think I’ve read the word Spalding at least 500 times. So did this cause a mini frenzy for Spalding? Probably not, but don’t you think there had to be some kick backs for Stern considering he’s been pushing so hard for this ball to stick around. I mean isn’t the most important thing for the player’s to be happy!?! Shouldn’t the commissioner have listened to the complaints in the pre-season?