The NBA Finals are with us and the sport has just lost two of its all-time greats: Jerry West and Bill Walton, thus it seemed a good time to investigate the sport’s history.
Basketball
Originator: James Naismith
Springfield (MA.)
December 1, 1891
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/highsm.57990/
Historians have found European antecedents for football and baseball but the sport of basketball was invented by a PE teacher at the YMCA. Naismith wanted a new activity for his students since they were getting tired of marching, calisthenics and gymnastic routines, there being no exercise videos in 1891.
The weather kept them indoors about half the year, so Naismith wrote down thirteen rules, put up a goal, tossed the young men a soccer ball and this is what he saw: 18 players tossing a soccer ball around in front of a wooden peach basket with an intact bottom. There is no backboard and the playing area is oddly shaped due to a support beam blocking one side.
Were he alive today, Naismith might not recognize the game he invented: one of the original rules stipulated that there was “to be no personal contact”. And, if he happened upon an NBA contest, Naismith might well wonder what became of his “no running with the ball” rule as today’s players take 2, 3 even four steps on their dunks with no call for travelling. .
The first college match with five players per side pitted Iowa University versus the visiting University of Chicago, January 18, 1896. The big city boys won, 15-12, thus chalking up both the first victory in college basketball and the initial road win. Later that year
the first official rules committee was formed and by 1940 the game looked sorta like it does today, except the players were much smaller, there weren’t many jump shots, there was far less contact beneath the basket, there were no 3 pointers and no one was dunking the ball.
The sport requires fewer players and a much smaller “field” than the other major team sports: football, baseball, soccer, hockey. You can learn by yourself with just a ball and a makeshift hoop while the others require additional players and a large playing area.
Basketball spread swiftly beyond our borders -- by 1901 the round ball was bouncing in England, France, Australia, China, Japan, India and Iran. It became an Olympic sport in 1936 (football still isn’t one) and is played at the collegiate level by more schools than either football or baseball. Basketball is also the only one of the major sport save soccer to have national playoffs for women, this despite the original feeling that the game was “too strenuous” for them.
Today many top pro stars earn north of twenty million dollars in annual salary and rake in millions more in shoe contracts and endorsement deals. This year’s average salary was just over seven million and the beginning salary is $1.2 million. There are pro leagues in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia. Thousands of men and women have earned college scholarships for their hoop skills.
All this from a game a PE teacher invented to battle student boredom!
For the curious, here’s a link to Naismith’s Thirteen original rules
https://www.usab.com/dr-james-naismiths-original-13-rules-of-basketball
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