We'd like to thank NBC Sports for using the pictured headline on their site last night, in reference to David Stern acquiescing to the demands of his players to bring back the old basketball, so we didn't have to. It's nice when global corporations do our work for us.
Anyway, yeah, the new ball, the "Orange Roundie", if you will, is going the way of the dodo come January 1. It's a rare moment of backtracking for David Stern, though with him, you have to assume there's some sort of bargaining position the reversal will benefit him for sometime down the line. (We expect all players to be wearing clown noses or something in the next year.)
Having not touched either the regulation basketball nor the new one, we don't feel particularly qualified to comment on the whole rigmarole. It is, after all, a ball. We're not sure what much more we can add. It's a ball.
R.I.P. Synthetic Basketball [The Fanhouse]