The Old Ball
From Hoopedia
(This article on the history of the basketball originally appeared in Hoop Magazine, April of 2001.)
If Barney Sedran could have somehow traveled to the future, he would be amazed and delighted to see what has been done with his basketball. Sedran was one of the first great professional players in the early 1900’s. He was all of 5-4 and 115 pound, but despite his diminutive size, he was such a prolific offensive player that he is enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Sedran set an early record by making 17 baskets in one game. That was during a time when teams seldom score more than 40 points, and sometimes won games with scores in the teens. Sedran’s 17 baskets for 34 points could probably be compared with Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100, but in one sense, it was even more impressive.
The ball Sedran used at the time had raised laces on it. Dribbling it was somewhat like dribbling a round football. Hall of Famer Joe Lapchick wrote in his book 50 Years of Basketball that the ball was “oversized and lopsided and blackened by dirt and old age. The big bulky pumpkin was laced and one end of the leather thong always protruded. The rubber inflation valve was pushed down and laced over, but the lump was always present.”
Now, however, we have something called an Infusion Basketball. Seven decades or so after manufacturers discovered how to make basketballs without laces, Spalding is making a basketball that does not require a pump or a needle.
What could Barney Sedran do with this baby?
And, as long as we’re on the subject, you have to wonder if basketballs are better today only because of advanced technology. Could it be the cows are better? Or were balls once made from different parts of the cow?
The fact is, the ball comes from the cow’s backside. It seems that the butt is the strongest part of a cow’s skin. You might look at your basketballs a little differently now.
Anyway, whether the basketball was made from skin around the shoulder or back or jowls, Sedran’s 17 baskets using a ball with lumps and raised laces is impressive, although that is not the most remarkable part of the record.
“The Mighty Mite of Basketball,” as he was called, scored his points for Utica in the New York State League. That league was slow to adopt changes made in the early game. One of those was adding a piece of equipment that we now take for granted, like the smooth basketball:
The Backboard.
That’s correct. There were no backboards behind the basket at the time because the league was one of the last to use them. So when Sedran scored 17 baskets, he did it with an open basket.
It was a remarkable achievement, and it doesn’t take much of an imagination to guess that after the game, Sedran’s teammates were congratulating him, patting him on the back and telling him; “Barney my man, you were kicking some butt tonight.”
Little did they know that if the basketball was made like it is now, he was also dribbling it.
