Ever wonder how your favorite sport was created? Well, the history of basketball is pretty fascinating.
James Naismith was a Physical Director and instructor at the International YMCA Training School (later renamed Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts.
His main job at the school was to organize sports for the students to play.
A lot of the activities they participated in were outdoor sports, such as soccer, lacrosse, and football.
But the school’s physical education director, Dr. Luther Gulick, felt that they needed to use the gym more and needed an activity to do indoors during the winter months.
So, he tasked Naismith with inventing a game that met those requirements.
The Invention of Basketball
Naismith experimented with a few ideas. At first, he developed an advanced version of his favorite childhood game, “duck on a rock,” where he had his students attempt to throw a soccer ball into a peach basket while they were guarded by defenders.
However, he quickly realized that because of the gym’s size and confinements, the game’s current setup was too difficult for the offensive team because defenders can crowd around the basket.
He had to find a way to make it easier to score and harder to defend.
Thus, he decided to raise the basket above the players’ heads, which forced players on both ends of the floor to use more skill and strategy.
To achieve this, Naismith bolted the baskets to the ten-foot balconies on opposite ends of the floor.
He also came up with 13 rules for the game and posted them on a wall in the gym.
The initial rules of basketball didn’t allow players to dribble the ball or run with it. The only way to get the ball up the court was to pass it to a teammate and the only way to get open shots was to cut.
So, in the first game of basketball ever played -on December 21, 1891- there were no crossovers or ankles broken.
It was just a bunch of white guys running around the basketball court passing and catching the ball, and trying to toss it into a peach basket while defenders tried to swipe and steal the ball from them (basketball has changed quite a bit since its inception).
As the sport gained popularity at the school, many of the graduating students brought it with them and taught it at YMCA institutions where they were instructors and this was when basketball started to spread.
The game evolved over the years, with the rules and style of play changing, which made the game more popular.
The First Professional Basketball Leagues
And in 1898, the first professional basketball league, the National Basketball League (NBL), was created.
The league was centered in Philadelphia and consisted of six teams with three in Philadelphia (Clover Wheelmen, Germantown Nationals, and Hancock Athletic Association), and three in New Jersey (Millville Glass Blowers, Camden Electrics, and Trenton Nationals).
However, two of the Philadelphia teams quit before the season was over, leaving four teams to compete.
By season’s end, the Trenton Nationals won the championship with a record of 18–2–1.
However, the NBL only lasted a few years and the league disbanded after the completion of the 1903-04 season.
But even with its demise, the sport of basketball was still growing in popularity.
Many years later, in 1925, the American Basketball League was developed. It was the first major basketball league in the U.S. and lasted multiple decades (from 1925-1955).
After it was dissolved in 1955, there was only one other major basketball league in existence -the Basketball Association of America (BAA).
The league was founded in 1946 and later rebranded as the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1949 when the BAA and NBL merged.
The first league game to be played was on Nov. 1, 1946, when the New York Knickerbockers took on the Toronto Huskies. New York won and the final score was 68-66.
The NBA also merged with another major league, the American Basketball Association (ABA), in 1976, making it the biggest professional basketball league in North America.
Fast forward a few years and the NBA is currently still the biggest professional basketball league and has been responsible for the spread and evolution of the sport worldwide.
And that’s the history of basketball.
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