Indeed
Shaq and Phil Jackson admit they deflated basketballs | For The Win
But what's really striking is how many former players, including Shaq and Phil Jackson, admit to have deflated basketballs during their playing days.
"Sometimes, in the games during all my championship runs, if a ball was too hard, I let air out," the former All-Star center said in a recent episode of "The Big Podcast With Shaq." "I'd have a needle. A friend of mine would have a needle and I would get the game ball. . I needed that extra grip, but I wasn't doing that for cheating purposes. I just needed the extra grip for my hands so I could palm it, a la Michael Jordan, the way he used to palm it.
"What we used to do was deflate the ball," [Phil Jackson] told the Chicago Tribune in a story published in 1986. "We were a short team with our big guys like Willis [Reed], our center, only about 6-8 and Jerry Lucas also 6-8, [Dave] DeBusschere, 6-6. So what we had to rely on was boxing out and hoping the rebound didn't go long.
"To help ensure that, we'd try to take some air out of the ball. You see, on the ball it says something like 'inflate to 7 to 9 pounds.' We'd all carry pins and take the air out to deaden the ball.
