Can boiling water fix a dented ping pong ball? (Spoiler alert: No news value at all)

My wife and I enjoy talking about many topics: The Three Kingdoms (the Chinese classic), how to cook tofu and whether or not lions – as you see in Lunar New Year celebrations – were indigenous to China when the tradition started.
She once told me that her father, a doctor from China, would use boiling water to remove a dent from a smashed-in ping pong ball. As some might say today: Buzzkill (But I don’t mean this in the fullest context).
And so I thought: I need to get some dented ping pong balls.