The controversy that embroiled the National Basketball Association during the past three months has mercifully ended. On Jan. 1, the NBA reverted to using its traditional leather ball, replacing the composite ball introduced at the beginning of the 2006 season.

The composite-ball saga might not take up much space in the history books, but it does serve as an interesting case study in how a business should, or shouldn't, introduce new technologies.

The new ball was introduced at a June news conference by the NBA and Spalding, the manufacturer, with much fanfare, promising "a new design and a new material that together offer better grip, feel, and consistency than the current leather ball."

The material is a "microfiber composite with moisture management that provides superior grip and feel throughout the course of a game" and does not require a break-in period like the current leather ball, according to the news release.

In the first two months of the season that the new ball was used, shooting percentages were virtually identical to those of the previous season, but turnovers rose 10 percent. Players began to complain about the new ball almost immediately, including superstar Shaquille O'Neal, who tactfully compared it to "one of those cheap balls that you buy at the toy store."

League executives initially dismissed player input in a condescending tone, stating that they had tested the ball extensively and that players had used a composite ball in high school and college. On Dec. 1, the NBA Players Association filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the imposition of the ball without player input.

Soon, high-profile stars like Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns and Jason Kidd of the New Jersey Nets began to wear Band-Aids on their fingers during games, complaining that the new ball left small cuts and abrasions. The powerful visual impact of the bandaged players, and the possibility that the ball was causing injuries, led the NBA to announce that it would revert to the leather ball.

Here are four lessons that businesses can learn from the fiasco:

1. Don't ignore feedback on new technology from workers in the field. The NBA tested the new ball in laboratory settings, and with a handful of recently retired stars. But it did not seek direct feedback from the players who would be the users of the new "technology."

Corporations that impose new technologies before getting input from the workers often discover a considerable gap between the theoretical efficiencies they forecast and the unforeseen difficulties these systems pose in daily use. For example, a CRM (customer relationship management) software system might have great potential for improving the customer experience and revenue. But if the software is even subtly difficult for customer service representatives to use in the real world, worker frustration and incomplete data will be the most likely results.

2. Live by brand, die by brand. One of the keys to the NBA's explosive growth in popularity the past 25 years has been its dedication to its brand and the highlighting of past superstars like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and current ones like Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. But if the players define the brand, imposing changes on them is obviously a losing proposition, even if the changes seem logical.

In the 1990s, Intel Corp. embarked on an advertising campaign, "Intel Inside," to raise consumer brand awareness. In 1994, a math professor at Lynchburg College discovered that Intel's new Pentium chip's math co-processor could give inaccurate responses to certain theoretical computations. Intel initially treated the crisis as an engineering issue, blandly declaring that "an average spreadsheet user could encounter this subtle flaw once in every 27,000 years of use."

But Intel's branding efforts had oriented consumers to view their products emotionally, not analytically. The controversy attracted media coverage, and Intel soon offered to replace the offending chip if a customer requested. The engineering realities, which might have satisfied corporate customers, were not appropriate to Intel's consumer strategies.

3. Quality as consistency vs. user experience. The NBA defined quality as consistency -- that all balls have precisely the same physical attributes, a standard achievable using composite materials, as opposed to leather that comes from individual cows and can vary slightly in feel and bounce.

The players defined quality differently. For many of them, the leather ball had a more comfortable feel and was more resilient as the game progressed. Moreover, they associated the leather ball with playing at the elite NBA level.

The lesson for businesses is not to reflexively automate when a craft solution is what customers actually desire and expect. The NBA players were defining quality as luxury, like wine consumers who prefer bottles sealed with cork, even though plastic tops objectively are in every way better at preserving the wine.

4. If you want to be right, admit you are wrong. NBA Commissioner David Stern did respect the No. 1 rule of crisis management by reversing his decision and even making fun of his own powerful reputation by joking that it was a good thing for the NBA to demonstrate that even he could make mistakes.

If a well-intended initiative is received spectacularly poorly, often the easiest way to defuse it is to graciously acknowledge the mistake, thank the critics for pointing it out, and once again be on the side of the angels.