Review: Baden's Latest

Baden's latest ball is technologically ahead of the rest.

STORY & PHOTOS BY GLENN NELSON

Baden's latest game ball is the Perfection Lexum Elite

SEATTLE - I guess I missed the memo or the release. The first clue I had that Baden Sports had again fiddled with its already fine game ball was during a recent HoopGurlz.com tournament. I busted a brand-new ball out of its plastic bag, pulled out a hand pump to shoot in a little air ... and ... could not find the valve.

The more I looked, the more furious I became. Game time was in mere minutes.

"Those (flipping) idiots sent us flawed basketballs!" I am loathe to admit I said (some of those "idiots" likely will read this).

As I frantically spun the ball, looking for any kind of opening to insert a pump needle, the girl sitting at the scorer's table flipped me one of those what-the-heck-is-wrong-with-you looks. She gave me another when I started laughing, hysterically, out of embarrassment. I remembered - someone from Baden had told me about the new valves.

Baden had developed the Stealth Soft-Valve System™ on its volleyballs. The valves are softened and the area around them cushioned to help maintain a consistent feel around the ball. If you were like me, and feel around for the hardened, extended valve stem, you know what I'm talking about. What you likely don't know is that those rigid stems can cause bad bounces and potentially influence performance.

Does one little valve make that much of a difference? Maybe not, but it all adds up. A bump here, a slippery surface there, some out-of-roundness and, all of a sudden, you're re-enacting the old parquet, dead-spot era at the Boston Garden. As Michael Schindler, Baden's CEO, told me, "Basketballs are like referees. The better they do, the less you notice them."

That's why Schindler's company has become almost maniacal in its quest for, well, as it says, "perfection."

Baden's latest basketball, the Perfection™, features symmetrical design and balanced panel widths, helping eliminate "channel cluster" - that area where all the seams converge on two sides of the ball. If there is a lot of channel cluster, the ball has a lumpy, uneven surface that can create bad bounces and certainly forces a shooter to rotate her hands for a more even grip - a too-common technique that prevents many from being able to even get their shots off.

This actually is a ball you can control with a hand on its end.

And we all know the great shooters - and ballhandlers, for that matter - have great touch and feel.

Which is why the Perfection is heaven for touch players. Baden retains its great Cushion Control Technology™, a layer of air cells under the cover that gives its balls a softer feel. Baden's microfiber cover also does not absorb moisture, turning the ball dark and making it heavier with use. And, by some kind of technological wizardry, it doesn't get slippery, either.

Baden knows experienced, elite-level players don't like slickness on their basketballs. That's why it also employs SureGrip™ graphics, which employ a tackified pebble surface, to help maintain gripability. Baden also does not carve canyon-like graphics into the surface of its balls, either.

"This ball is truly revolutionary not only in its design, but in the way it can enhance a player’s performance by providing a more consistent feel throughout the ball," says none other than Pat Summitt, the legendary head coach of the University of Tennessee women's baskeball team.

A high-tech basketball? Why not? This is an era in which technology has enhanced physical performance, shoes, uniforms, equipment such as racquets and bats, it only makes sense that it improves the most basic level of equipment - the ball. Tossing out lopsided, leather, plastic or old-school synthetic seems so 1980s.

I recently was sitting near an elite-level team as its coach gave his pre-game speech in a tournament that used another company's game balls. "Listen," he told his players before sending them out for the opening tip, "these balls are a lot harder than our Badens. You're going to have to do your best to get used to them as quickly as you can."

You know, Schindler is right about the fact that you shouldn't actually notice a ball during play, but his company's are so much better, it's hard not to. We'd call this a perfect ball, but that would just take all the fun out of it for Baden. They get the biggest kick out of changing your notion of what a basketball is supposed to be.

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Glenn Nelson is the publisher of HoopGurlz.com and the editor-in-chief of Scout Media (www.Scout.com), an online sports network and magazine-publishing company and subsidiary of Fox Interactive Media. Glenn also founded and coached the Dragons and Northwest HoopGurlz select girls basketball teams. He previously was a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The Seattle Times. His work also has appeared in several national magazines and books. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing, 2002).