Hasta La Ideas

My brief stint in environments design consisted of exhibit design, where we were faced with the difficult task of trying to direct an unpredictably flowing crowd through a confined space, hopefully controlling how they would encounter and interact with elements within that space. But even designers with far more experience in that area can tell you there’s no accounting for what humans will do, despite your efforts to channel them with design rules.

So it went with the evolution of basketball.

Player Hack #1: Self-Passing

James Naismith’s original rules only allowed the ball to be passed from one player to another. At some point a “bounce pass” became allowed; this was a clever way for a player to get the ball to a teammate when the opponent’s persistent coverage made an air pass impossible.

This is where the unpredictable nature of human behavior comes in. Clever players began to “hack” the bounce pass by essentially bounce passing the ball to themselves while running. Naismith admired the ingenuity of this move, and by 1910 it was part of the game, referred to as “dribbling.”

As you can see by the photo above, the manufacturing technology of the time could not produce an absolutely perfect sphere. Which meant bouncing or dribbling the ball could not produce consistent and predictable results. But in the 1940s it became possible to mold rubber pieces in hemispherical sections, and a more or less perfect ball could be produced. Using this better ball, dribbling could be executed with precision, and it became a major part of the game.

Modern-day mold with “pebbling” for texture

The basketball of today, made from a non-toxic synthetic leather composite

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