Airborne Basketball: Did A Teenager Really Shoot And Score From A Plane?

What are the odds of this being real? Let's look at the variables. The plane is going, let's say, 75 mph. The ATV is going a lot more slowly. The ball has to fall at exactly the right angle to go into the hoop taking the different speeds of the two vehicles into account. The ATV, moreover, which you can see in the video is bouncing wildly as it makes its way down a dirt path, is not a predictable target. And the margins are tiny. A basketball rim measures 18 inches in diameter. The ball is slightly more than half that width. So, the ball would have to fall from a moving aircraft 1,000 feet down and then go through an 18-inch wide hoop mounted aboard a ground vehicle traveling at a completely different speed bouncing along as it goes. The team leader, whom we have not seen identified, said it took "around 18 tries" before they swished it. How many do we think it would take? Around 18,000, if you got lucky.

The video is ultra-suspicious, too. The establishing shots are fine---we don't doubt that they went flying. And the shot of the ball being dropped by the backseat passenger in the plane is solid, too. But when the video cuts to the distant shot of the ball falling---presumably taken by the passenger of a car driving parallel to the ATV, things get dicey.

It's clear that a basketball was dropped, but the green of the farm fields the plane was flying over doesn't seem to match the fallow cornfield the ATV is bouncing along over. And the ATV is not visible in the shot.

But then the video cuts to a very quick shot of the ball falling---such scenes are really easy to fake. And the last shot, which shows the ball falling into the hoop, and the speed of the ball seems as it falls through the hoop seems too slow. How fast should it have been going? Its terminal velocity, which it would have reached in just a fraction of the air it fell through, is around 45 mph. It won't get any faster no matter how far it falls.

So, the video itself is questionable, as are the acting talents of the young men on the ATV. We just don't buy the video.

A regulation basketball weighs a pound. Would a one-pound object falling on a person's head at 45 mph kill them? Maybe, but probably not. Basketball players occasionally take a fast-passed ball in the noggin. It's not fun. They survive. So, the danger level to the ATV riders was real but small.

As far as the law is concerned, the pilot was taking a big risk. The Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) address this specifically in rule 90.15, which says that "no pilot in command of a civil aircraft may allow any object to be dropped from that aircraft that creates a hazard to persons or property. So technically anyway, this rule doesn't prevent pilots from allowing objects to be dropped so long as they take reasonable precautions. It being faked is an excellent precaution, but even if it were real, the risk to life and limb was minimal. It's probably a gray area.

But did it really happen? It's not impossible, just extraordinarily unlikely. The physics involved are daunting. The margin of error is tiny, and the variables are many. If they really did it, "wow." If they faked it, nicely done. And here's hoping the FAA doesn't try to ruin their summer vacation.