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Review: Baden's New Ball

Reaching for Elite

By Glenn Nelson
HoopGurlz
Jun 21, 2003

Baden Sports has released a women's game basketball - the Lexum Elite - that raises the bar for composites in terms of feel.

SEATTLE - Almost six years ago, with downtown Seattle ablaze in Christmas splendor, Michael Schindler came up from Baden Sports' worldwide headquarters in neighboring Federal Way bearing gifts and a cocksure declaration.

Handing me one of Baden's top-of-the-line leather balls and a newfangled ball called a Lexum Composite, Schindler assured me, "In a couple of months, you won't even be using the leather ball anymore."

Schindler, now the president of Baden Sports, breathlessly assaulted me with a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo on why that was going to be and, it being Christmas, I listened and even jotted down notes but, at the very next session of lunchtime hoops at Seattle University, proceeded to unveil the new leather prize. Months later, we finally broke that baby in and I even declared in a Seattle Times column that Schlindler was wrong about the composite and that the leather ball was actually getting better with age. It was that great, patented Cushion Control! We all loved it.

Well, someone please pass a towel so I can wipe off the egg.

Today, that Lexum 801 leather sits in some cardboard-box basketball casket in my storage room. One day, my lunchtime crew agreed to give the Lexum Comp a whirl, it felt game-ready from the first minute and stayed that way until I finally retired from "playing" to coach fulltime. I'm telling you, it was that great, patented Cushion Control. Since I no longer hang around NBA gyms, I can't remember the last time I even touched a leather ball. Nowadays, the NBA is the only league on the planet that does not allow composite balls to be used in competition and even Hall of Fame coach Bobby Knight says, "I won't let any other ball in my gym but a Baden ball."

A day last February brimmed with deja vu when an emissary from Baden visited the HoopGurlz Challenge at the Furtado Center, the Sonics and Storm training facility, with another gift and yet another declaration. Unveiling the Lexum Elite with its shiny gold lettering and downy soft feel, the emissary assured me, Schindler-like, that this ball now had the "best feel in basketball."

Mindful of how my previous skepticism had led to an egg facial, I tossed the ball into play and our girls’ basketball tournament became the first event ever to use the Elite in competition. HoopGurlz has since adopted the Lexum Elite as its official ball and I'm certain we won't use another until, well, Baden comes out with a replacement. The Elite has been released to the public just this month.

How Baden can one-up this ball is difficult to fathom.

"Best feel" is not just a mantra for Baden, it is a guarantee. They'll take the Lexum Elite back if you don't agree that it's the best. You won't be letting it out of your sight. This is one for the new millennium, when basketballs nearly have become fashion accessories. You see kids lugging them in the malls and down the halls at school, right? I have some players, I think, who still take their balls into bed with them. Well, the Lexum Elite is a ball befitting such treatment. It just feels so good.

That feel starts with the patented Cushion Control technology built into the bladder of all great Baden balls. The new bladder has wider, deeper channels ... ahhhh ... and the channels are reinforced to prevent the splitting that occurs with other balls. Wrapped around that bladder is an advanced microfiber layer, then a lower pebbled, polyurethane cover that has a nice, slightly tacky, grippier feel.

Baden achieved that antidote to slickness - the bane of all shooters and ballhandlers - through a discovery process I recently experienced. Covering the first round of the NCAA women's tournament this past March, I was shocked at what I thought I saw. I could have sworn that I saw players and then the referees choose to play with a ball that looked dark and beaten up, like an aged leather ball.

After checking around, I discovered that the NCAA's official ball, the Wilson Solution, employs a moisture-absorbing, composite cover. So, like broken-in leather, the Wilson cover helps keep the sweat off the ball, thus improving the grip. That's good for, um, the NCAA, which is big enough (and/or has a big enough contract with Wilson) to constantly cycle new balls into competition. But what about the rest of us? Over time, all that absorbed moisture darkens the ball and, horrors, starts to weigh it down. Ultimately, that additional weight is the reason why my Baden 801 leather and all those NBA model Spalding leathers are sitting in storage like artifacts from a bygone era.

Not to mention that the open pigmentation required for the Evolution cover renders the ball, out of the box, a very unbasketball-like salmon color that makes me suspicious for some reason. Baden, I've learned to trust. It has a long history in women's basketball, having been the official ball of the WBCA for many years, as well as the old American Basketball League (ABL). It now is the official ball of the National Women's Basketball League (NWBL), the official ball in the United Kingdom, Spain, Estonia, and NFHS and FIBA approved. Heck, Baden even helped develop the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame (in Knoxville, Tenn.), on top of which rests the world's largest basketball, weighing in at 20,000 pounds - of course also sponsored by Baden.

Some may prefer the hype of NCAA or WIAA affiliation. Or the old-school smell of leather. But I've learned my lesson about all of that. Me, I prefer my basketballs orange, grippy with deep channels, cushiony and guaranteed. And the only ball that fits all those criteria is the Baden Lexum Elite.