The Perfect Swish, 2011

I want you to close your eyes. Don’t be ashamed. Close them. Imagine the perfect profile view of a regulation NBA rim, 18 inches in diameter. Now picture a Spalding™ official game ball, 29.5 inches in circumference - the 8-panel regulation basketball.  A ball already so perfect that in 2006, the league introduced a 2-panel ball in an updated microfiber fabrication and the players reacted negatively. They hated it. Commissioner David Stern acted accordingly and went back to the standard leather ball. The players wanted their ball back. The same ball they’d grown accustomed to for decades. They wanted the same balls that Jeff Koons suspended in water for The Three Ball Equilibrium Tank. The same ball that John Starks used for “The Dunk” over Horace Grant as Michael Jordan leapt just a split second too late to defend him.

Think back to Michael Jordan’s final shot before his second retirement in the 1998 NBA Finals when he crossed over to his left and the Utah Jazz’s Bryon Russell shamefully fell to the floor. After the shot, Michael stood still for a few seconds and held his hand in the ‘follow through’ motion, so as to punctuate his life and legacy with what would perhaps be his final shot as a Chicago Bull. It was his perfect swish.

Envision a black background, the perfect vacuum - an infinite free space. The ideal conditions for scientific experimentation. You are in that space. Imagine the sound made as a leather basketball hits the bottom of the braided nylon net.