LeBron James doesn’t like the new synthetic basketball. “It’s not a good basketball,” the Cleveland Cavaliers Forward told the AP. “It kind of feels like a basketball you buy for your kids at Christmas or something.”  And he’s not the only one. James’ sentiments have been echoed by many of his NBA colleagues. Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade and others have all bashed the new model. “Sometimes it feels good, sometimes it doesn’t,” James added. “It’s got no consistency.”  James initially thought it would only take a few adjustments, but he’s still having trouble getting comfortable with the bounce and touch of the new ball. “Sometimes you can grip it, and sometimes during the game it sticks to your hand,” he said. “It won’t bounce, it will just roll on you. I don’t know why we can’t get used to this ball. But it’s just not good.” James first used the ball in the All-Star game last season, which he doesn’t attribute to earning MVP honors. He continued to use it in Japan during the FIBA World Championships and he worked with it during practices during the offseason. James also doesn’t understand why the league thought that going with a synthetic ball would improve the quality of the sport. “You can shorten our shorts, tell us how to wear wristbands, things like that. Change the dress code. But the one thing we care about is the basketball,” he said. “When you start changing the thing we play with every single day, it doesn’t make sense to me — at all.”Â
Â