Tom Brady isn’t the only one who prefers playing with a deflated ball.
ESPN’s Baxter Holmes has a long feature about basketballs and how several players prefer their balls. In the article, Holmes points out that both Shaq and Phil Jackson have admitted to deflating balls.
“Sometimes, in the games during all my championship runs, if a ball was too hard, I let air out,” Shaq said on “The Big Podcast With Shaq.” “I’d have a needle. A friend of mine would have a needle and I would get the game ball. … I needed that extra grip, but I wasn’t doing that for cheating purposes.