Inflating a Basketball for Dummy Collectors

Basketball inflation

From time to time, we like to make fun of our dumbasses (if you didn't know, the Antisocial Network staffers hand out a daily "Dumbass of the Day" award) for some of their more truly ridiculous statements. It's not bad enough that these people hold themselves out as authorities on topics they'd never heard of before starting to "research" them; but some of them are nowhere near as skilled as their biographies might suggest. Take, for instance, eHow's Sheri Lamb: according to her profile, Sheri "...has covered virtually every beat associated with community newspapers...[specializing] in sports." She also claims "...skills as a reporter..."; but the quality of her output in "How to Keep a Basketball From Losing Air" (now at SportsRec.com) definitely belies both claims.

We say that not because her advice was wrong (though it was rather stupid), but because what she said demonstrated both a rather poor grasp of sports and a poor grasp of the grammar and writing skills needed to be a journalist. Not only that, but she's also ignorant of basic science! We'll address her lousy writing skills first: in the introduction, Sheri blithely informed her readers that

"While a basketball will become deflated and lose its balance after several months, you can follow a series of steps that will keep your basketball inflated longer than former NBA player Manute Bol, who stood at 7 feet 6 inches." In that one compound sentence, Sheri mades two foolish statements and a grammatical error: In what universe does a sphere "lose its balance"? In what universe does Manute Bol's height have anything to do with duration? Manute never stood at 7'-6"; idiomatically speaking Bol stood 7'-6" -- no preposition is necessary As for Lamb's limited grasp of sports, we might be able to cut her some slack for speaking of a basketball game thus:

"A properly inflated basketball is necessary to achieve as much bounce as is needed for a match..."

In our experience (please note that some of our staff are native Hoosiers), not many roundball fans would think to call a basketball game a "match." Maybe that's sportswriter-speak, though; perhaps she also calls them "tilts."

Last, though not least; Sheri's claim that, to maintain proper pressure in your ball, you should...

"Store your basketball in a warm area [because the] cooler the temperature, the more the air inside the basketball will expand and leak."

...is precisely backward, hence our observation that Lamb must be a scientific illiterate. Air expands as it warms, not as it cools, Sheri! Combine her clear lack of both skill and knowledge with Lamb's unfortunate waffling between whether her readers want to play basketball or preserve a souvenir, and it's no wonder that Sheri's up on the podium to receive a Dumbass of the Day award (her fourth)...

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