Wilson Reinvents the Basketball



Sports equipment giant Wilson recently unveiled a 3D-printed basketball prototype that doesn’t need to be inflated and features a see-through lattice design. Basketball technology has come a long way since the early days of the sport, when real stitched leather was used as the main material. Wilson is changing the game completely with a concept that completely does away with pneumatic pressure. Instead, the Wilson Airless relies on the elasticity of it’s research-grade polymer material to produce the same bounce as traditional basketballs. This eliminates the need to inflate the ball to a certain pressure, as well as known problems like puncture risks and air escaping through the inflation valve over long periods of time. While there are still questions to be answered — like how it reacts to spin and whether air passing through it affects the trajectory — Wilson plans to introduce the new basketball commercially sometime in the near future.