Deflate Gate is a mostly silly NFL controversy, where the New England Patriots were accused of deflating footballs to help Tom Brady throw the ball more easily. What does this have to do with the NBA? Well, pretty much nothing. Well, almost nothing. A few writers have stumbled upon a 1986 article by Sam Smith that quoted Phil Jackson admitting that the old 1970s Knicks deflated basketballs to help establish the slower pace the Knicks wanted.
The thrust of the articles mostly noted that because the Knicks admitting to deflating balls, they were cheaters and their wins were tainted. Jackson was quick to clarify that, though they delated balls, they did so within the legal limits. The claim that the Knicks deflated but only did so legally, however, seems flatly contradicted by other available evidence.
In fact, the articles I read today totally missed Smith’s extensive review of this issue in his book “The Jordan Rules.” In it, Jackson talks about how careful he was to avoid ball doctoring in the early 1990s: “Actually, such tactics [Jackson suspects the Pistons of tampering with one of the baskets] are not at all that uncommon around the NBA. It’s why Jackson always carries an air-pressure gauge with him….Jackson always test the poundage in the game balls before the game. The balls this night in Miami were well below the required 7 ½ to 8 ½ pounds. An innocent oversight? Unlikely. With a softer ball players can’t dribble as fast and the game slows. It was what a less talented team like Miami wanted against a running team like the Bulls. Jackson got the balls pumped up and the Heat were deflated. It works the other way, too; Jackson has caught the Lakers trying to sneak balls with 15 to 17 pounds of air into the game. Why? Magic Johnson likes a high dribble, and a livelier ball results in long rebounds that key the kind of fast break the Lakers love to use, especially at home.”
So, ball doctoring is a fairly common tactic. Is it cheating? Kind of. Back then, Jackson admitted that there is fine line on this subject: “It was no coincidence that Jackson knew what to look for. He had played on the 1973 championship Knicks, regarded as one of the smartest teams ever to play the game, and such tactics were not beyond their ken. ‘We used to deflate the ball because were a short team and didn’t want long rebounds,’… most of his teammates carried pins in their belts to deflate the ball when they’d get a chance. ‘It also helped our offense because we like to pass the ball, and other teams couldn’t run on us as well because the ball wouldn’t come up so fast when they dribbled.’ The nice word for it all is gamesmanship.”
Ummm…deflating the ball during the game with a pin? That sounds a little more cheaty to me than Jackson is admitting to now. This is not to say that this type of activity somehow taints the Knicks of the 1970s. The other teams could readily inspect any ball at any time and one never knows really who altering the ball really helps. Still, it is interesting to see that the game-within-the-game has always existed.