WNBA�s Ball Change No Big Deal
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Get Storm Headlines!When the NBA changed its basketballs to a new composite model last fall, the result was three months worth of uproar before the league agreed to go back to its traditional leather balls, effective Jan. 1. This spring, the WNBA has made its own change to the ball, but with little or no fanfare.
"No, nothing at all," said Storm Coach 
Anne Donovan. "I don't think you're going to see any issues like you saw with our counterparts."
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As far as the feel of the new WNBA ball, answers vary as to whether there is even a perceptible change.
"I like the feel of it a lot better than last year," said veteran forward 
Wendy Palmer. "It has a little more grip. Then, the seams are obviously different. I like it. I like the feel of it."
"It's a little less slippery than the ones from last year," added forward 
Iziane Castro Marques.
Guard 
Tanisha Wright is a dissenter, saying, "The design on it is a little different, but it's still the same ball. They're just not as broken in yet."
In general, female players are better equipped to deal with changes in the basketball they play with. Through the 2004 Olympics, FIBA played with the same basketball for both men and women. The WNBA's basketball, as well as the one used by women in the NCAA, has a slightly smaller circumference. Even that fundamental difference was usually judged to take about a practice to work out.
"I think for women, because a lot of us grew up playing with a men's ball, it's not a big deal for the change or the switch," explained Palmer, a veteran of overseas competition as well as the WNBA. "It takes us a small amount of time just to make the change - one practice, most of the time when you come from overseas. You've got the feel back the next couple of practices."
Castro Marques found the adjustment between the men's ball and the women's ball more challenging when she came to the WNBA from playing abroad.
"Overseas, they changed that so it's now the smaller ball for women," she said. "That's better, because when you play with the bigger ball and then change to the smaller ball, that's tough."
Players like Palmer are used to switching between various different basketballs, so they've grown used to adjusting to whatever they are playing with at the time. That's a skill their male counterparts might not have.
"Even in the off-season, when I was working out, I would do drills with a women's basketball - a college ball, which is the same size, but it's a totally different feel from the WNBA ball," said Palmer. Then I would go out and play pickup with a men's ball.
"What I found funny was the guys I worked out with, when they shot around with me and then we went to play pickup, their shots were all off because they'd been fooling around with the women's ball. I think with women it's more natural to make that transition."
In general, the consensus is simple: The result of the shot, not the ball used to shoot it, is what matters.
"As long as they go in," said Castro Marques, "I don't care."
"A ball's a ball," concluded sharpshooting rookie 
Katie Gearlds. "They all like to go in."