The NBA might be playing with chipped basketballs soon. Commissioner Adam Silver says the league is testing a Wilson ball with a tiny tracking chip inside, and it could be used in real games as soon as next year. Fans are already calling it magnet ball.
“We’re experimenting with putting a small chip in the ball that weighs roughly a gram.”
Adam Silver, to CNBC
Silver laid it out in a CNBC interview on Sunday. The chip weighs about one gram inside a ball that weighs around 620 grams. The league already tested chipped balls in the G League, Summer League and some preseason games, and players could not tell which ball had the chip in it.
The chip tracks spin, movement and trajectory. The main use is officiating. If somebody grazes the ball right before it flies out of bounds, the chip sees the change in spin. If a shot’s arc changes in midair, the chip sees that too. Silver also floated a consumer version that could help players study their own shooting, but he said that is years away.
Fans are not exactly trusting the process. The reaction was instant: “So magnet ball is real?” One fan wrote, “AKA magnet ball, they not even tryna hide it.” To be clear, nothing Silver said suggests the chip changes how the ball moves. It is a tracker, not a steering wheel.
“We’ve been saying they were in the ball all along.”
Fan reaction online
Still, the idea could show up in NBA officiating as soon as next year, with a fuller rollout possible by 2027. The ball is no longer just a ball.
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