Time away gave Iman brand new outlook
MLB de-juices baseballs to put brakes on homers
Life away from basketball helped Iman Shumpert fall in love with the sport all over again.
Living in Georgia, Shumpert had to drive almost an hour to get to a gym to play, then another 15 to 20 minutes to get into another gym to lift weights. Then he’d spend another hour driving to Georgia Tech to get physical treatment. All of these things were done on shared college campuses, and he did not have preferential treatment over collegiate athletes who needed to train.
“A lot of times, I found myself at an L.A. Fitness or an Equinox gym. You know, just trying to get my weights in and make sure that I get some sort of cardio in even if I have to do the stairmaster,” Shumpert conceded. “It was kind of cool to go back to that high school feel, that high school hunger of, ‘I just want to play basketball, I don’t really care. If y’all give me a gym, I’ll figure it out. I just got to play ball today.’
“I just got to be in the gym. So it was cool to just — not that I fell out of love with — but it was cool to quote-unquote ‘fall in love with the game again’ and just fall in love with the little things of, ‘Man, I’ll go to the YMCA and play ball if I have to.’”
Shumpert spent the early season working out full force but said he took his foot off the gas a little bit to ensure he had fresh legs when he signed with a new team. He admitted, though, that working out by yourself and working out in an NBA setting are two different animals.
“It’s hard for me to simulate those things without having NBA players around,” Shumpert laughed. “You can say, ‘I did the drill, and I shot the floater,’ but it’s another thing when you’ve got (Nets shot-blocker Norvel) Pelle out here trying to block your shot playing pickup. So it’s been great to get around those guys and be able to play. We played ‘threes’ the other day, being able to play ‘threes’ and really get some game-like action out there, really get to see that length again that the NBA brings.”
Whether it’s the YMCA, Georgia Tech, or now the Nets’ HSS Training Facility in Industry City, Shumpert
didn’t care. He just wanted to hoop and didn’t care where it was. His new basketball gym is a little bit bigger than the YMCA on Bedford and Monroe.
The veteran guard signed a deal to rejoin the Nets, a team he had exchanged a cup of coffee with last season. It’s a Nets team that desperately needs what Shump sold them: energy, intensity and an injection of adrenaline into the veins of a defense that has looked lifeless more often than not.
Shumpert called the transition “pretty easy,” citing relationships with all the coaches and trainers the Nets have hired in recent months. The Nets are hoping he can get up to speed quick. Twenty-five games are already in the bag, and the Nets are banking Shump can make an impact sooner than later.
“I’m kind of trying to do everything all in one really quick (period) to try and help the guys as opposed to being worried about myself,” he said. “I’m more so trying to come in and help the team because we’ve got another scheme of superstars over here now.”
They are also banking on Shumpert leaning on his experience on the Cavaliers team that won its first championship in franchise history on the backs of LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in 2016. Shump said he knows the most important thing for him on a team this stacked is full understanding of his role.
“I’ve played on multiple different franchises and with each franchise, I think I’ve had to play alongside some form of superstar in our league,” Shumpert said. “There’s a lot of times that in order for a star to be a star, a role player has to be a lesser version of themselves. Not a worse version, but a lesser version just to focus on the things that we got to focus on to win. And I think that adds a level of comfort not only to our superstars, but the rest of the guys in our locker room to say, you know, I come in with a high confidence whether I score 30 or I score one point. It doesn’t really matter. I’m going to carry myself the same way and I think that becomes contagious when you’re playing on a special ball club that we got.
“When we get to those later months of the season,” Shumpert continued, “the consistency and the communication is what provides the energy for us to play defense on that end.”
Major League Baseball has slightly deadened its baseballs amid a years-long surge in home runs.
MLB anticipates the changes will be subtle, and a memo to teams last week cited an independent lab that found the new balls will fly 1 to 2 feet shorter when hit over 375 feet. Five teams also plan to add humidors to their stadiums, raising the total to 10 of 30 MLB stadiums equipped with humidity-controlled storage spaces.
A person familiar with the note spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Monday because the memo, sent by MLB executive vice president of baseball operations Morgan Sword, was sent privately.
The makeup of official Rawlings baseballs used in MLB games has come under scrutiny in recent years. A record 6,776 homers were hit during the 2019 regular season, and the rate of home runs fell only slightly during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season — from 6.6% of plate appearances resulting in homers in 2019 to 6.5% last year.
A four-person committee of scientists commissioned by MLB concluded after the 2019 season that baseballs had less drag on average than in previous seasons, contributing to the power surge. Their report blamed the spike in part on inconsistencies in seam height.
MLB’s balls are hand-sewn by workers at Rawlings’ factory in Costa Rica, leading to inevitable, minor deviations in production that can have sizeable repercussions.
The league mandates all baseballs have a coefficient of restitution (COR) — essentially, a measure of the ball’s bounciness — ranging from .530 to .570, but in recent years the average COR had trended upward within the specification range.
In an effort to better center the ball, Rawlings has loosened the tension on the first of three wool windings within the ball. Its research estimates the adjustment will bring the COR down .01 to .02 and will also lessen the ball’s weight by 2.8 grams without changing its size. The league does not anticipate the change in weight will affect pitcher velocities.
The memo did not address the drag of the baseball, which remains a more difficult issue to control.
The Rockies, Diamondbacks, Mariners, Mets and Red Sox already have humidors. The five teams adding humidors were not identified in the memo.