Why is a basketball orange? I’m assuming that when basketballs were first made out of leather, they were brown. Who decided orange, when, and why?
Has the rule of “palming” (or carrying) a basketball disappeared? When I was playing basketball in school, palming was called often. It’s when a dribbler catches the ball in his hand as it falls, then rotates his wrist and pushs the ball down to the court (instead of keeping his hand on top of the ball when dribbling, constantly keeping his hand on the top of the ball.) Most players palm the ball when they are dribbling up court, but I’ve never heard that the rule was abolished.
I hope that explaination made sense. The point is that I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen this called in a college game (forget the pros. They won’t even call travelling.)
Well, the ball isn’t a pure orange, it’s more of a brownish-orange. I suspect it just has to do with different materials, or a way to make the ball more distinctive from the college game which is more brown.
The rule of palming has not disappeared but it’s interpretation has. As long as the palm doesn’t interfere with the basketball’s natural bouncing rythm, it’s ok. So if I palm it and hold it for a second or two and then bounce it we have a palming call, but otherwise no. Of course, the rule is enforced less at the NBA level just like most other things.
Rule 4
Section 18. Dribble
Art. 4. The dribble ends when:
a. The dribbler catches or carries/palms the ball by allowing it to
come to rest in one or both hands.
b. The dribbler touches the ball with both hands simultaneously.
c. An opponent bats the ball.
d. The ball becomes dead.
A.R. 11. A1, while advancing the ball by dribbling, manages to keep a hand in contact with the ball until it reaches its maximum height. A1 maintains such control as the ball descends, pushing it to the playing court at the last moment; however, after six or seven bounces, A1’s hands are in contact with the ball and the palm of the hand on this particular dribble is skyward. RULING: Violation. The ball has come to rest on the hand while the palm and the fingers are facing upward, so the dribble has ended.
When the player continues to move or stand still and dribble, the player has committed a violation by dribbling a second time. (See Rule 9-6.)
So, it looks like you can “palm” the ball as long as it stays in motion.
Palming is still as illegal as it used to be. It just gets called less nowadays for a multitude of reasons. There was a similar thread on this topic not long ago, but I can’t seem to find the link.
Some of the reasons we all came up with include (but aren’t limited to)
Increased speed of the game makes it tougher to catch
Bigger and faster players result in other thing being watched more closely while more minor transgressions are overlooked
It is called less tightly, because due to the erosion of basic fundamental skills players actually commit the error so much the game would grind to a halt.
So you think that orange was settled on for tv? Possibly, although try as I might, I cannot find a cite for this. When the ABA went to red white and blue basketballs, visibility didn’t seem to be an issue.
I was merely guessing at a reason for the color of a basketball.
From my experience, all leather basketballs may start out orange, but they turn brown pretty quickly. But a lot of us grew up playing with synthetic (usually rubberized) basketballs that were designed for outdoor use were always orange.
No one has written a definitive glossary of basketball lingo, but I’ve heard the ball referred to as the “pumpkin” and the “orange” since the 1980s.
I suppose that with a basketball, visibility is never much of an issue since the ball is fairly large and the court isn’t very large.