Basketball

The first basketball court:

Basketball is one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports.  It’s a team sport with the objective being to shoot or toss a spherical ball through a ‘basket’ that’s horizontally positioned on the narrow or width end of the basketball court. This allows individual team players to score points while following a set of rules.  Two teams of five players usually play on a marked rectangular court with a basket / goal at each width end.

In early December of 1891, Dr. James Naismith,  a physical education professor and instructor at the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School (todays YMCA)  in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, was trying to come up with a game to keep his gym class active on a cold rainy day.

He wanted an energetic indoor game to keep his students occupied and provide proper levels of fitness during the typically long New England winters. After rejecting several ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in gymnasiums, following a major brain storm, he wrote the basic rules for the new game that would become basketball.  His second step was to nail a peach basket onto a 10-foot (3.05 m) elevated track, and the entertainment began. 

In contrast to modern basketball goals & nets, this peach basket retained its bottom, so balls had to be retrieved manually after each “basket” or point was made; this soon proved ineffective, so the larger portion of bottom of the basket was soon removed, allowing the balls to be poked out with a long dowel or rod each time a player scored a basket.

Basketball was originally played with an ‘association football’ which is a fancy name for a standard soccer ball. The first balls that were made specifically for basketball were brown in color, and remained so until the late 1950s that Tony Hinkle, searching for a ball that would be more visible to players and spectators alike, introduced the orange ball that is now most commonly used.

Initially, “dribbling” was not part of the game unless the bounce passes to a teammate is considered dribbling. Passing the ball was the primary method utilized for ball movement. Dribbling was eventually introduced but the procedure was originally limited by the often lop-sided shape of the early game balls. Dribbling became a major part of the game around the 1950s, when manufacturers improved the ball’s shape to that of a more accurate spherical shape.

The peach baskets were used until 1906 when they were finally replaced by metal hoops with backboards.

A regulation basketball hoop consists of a rim that’s 18 inches in diameter; 10 feet high, and mounted to a backboard. A team can score a field goal by shooting the ball through the basket during regular play. A field goal scores two points for the shooting team if a player is touching or closer to the basket than the ‘three-point line’ displayed upon the basketball court and three points if the player is behind the three-point line. The team with the most points at the end of the game, surprise surprise, wins! But additional time (overtime) may be issued when or if the game ends with a tie score.

The basketball rules currently allow the ball to be advanced on the court by bouncing or throwing it:  This action is permitted while walking, running and or dribbling while throwing / passing the ball to a teammate.  It is a violation to move ‘about’ (if you have the ball) without dribbling the ball. This action constitutes traveling / walking; to ‘carry it’ during the dribbling process, or to double dribble (to hold the ball with both hands then resume dribbling a second time during a single possession), are additional infractions.

Various violations are generally called “fouls”(each player is limited to 5 per game). When disruptive physical contact (a personal foul) is made and penalized, a free throw or free shot is usually awarded to an offensive player if he is fouled while shooting the ball or on certain occasions even if the fowled player is not shooting. A technical foul may also be issued when certain infractions occur, most commonly for unsportsmanlike conduct on the part of a player or the team coach. A technical foul gives the opposing team a free throw and possession of the ball.

Basketball has evolved the use of many styles of play, including but not limited to: shooting, passing, dribbling, and rebounding, as well as the development of specialized player positions and offensive and defensive structures such as ‘Man, to Man’ or ‘Zone’ style defensive techniques.

While competitive basketball is carefully regulated, numerous variations of basketball have developed for casual play. Competitive basketball is chiefly an indoor sport played on a judiciously marked and maintained basketball court, but a less regulated variation is often played outdoors in both inner cities as well as remote areas using ‘goals’ similar to the one depicted below:

Basketball's early support spread to YMCAs throughout the United States; in turn the game quickly spread through large portions of the USA and Canada. By 1895, there were several well established women’s high school teams. Although the YMCA was responsible for initially developing and spreading the game, within 10 years it elected to discourage the new sport, as rough play was said to attract rowdy crowds which began to detract from the YMCA’s primary mission vision.

During the early decades of the 20th century, basketball quickly became the ideal interscholastic sport due to its modest equipment and personnel requirement needs in comparison to other games. Prior to widespread TV coverage of professional and college sports, the popularity of high school basketball was unrivaled in many parts of America.  Perhaps the most legendary of high school teams was Franklin, Indiana’s ‘Wonder Five’, which took the nation by storm during the 1920s, dominating Indiana basketball and earning national recognition.

With basketball king in Indiana, the team from Franklin, IN was dubbed the “Wonder Five”. This small town (sporting only 4,909 residents in 1920) located about 20 miles south of Indianapolis produced a team that captured the Indiana State Basketball Championship three years in in a row, 1920, 1921, and 1922.  The boys had started playing together as children and developed superior interaction focusing on team cooperation which is proof positive that basketball is truly a team sport.

Today practically every high school in the United States fields a basketball team that participates in varsity competition.  The US states of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky are particularly well known for their citizens’ devotion to high school basketball.

Dr. Naismith, who dreamed up the game in the first place, was instrumental in establishing college basketball programs.  Naismith himself later coached at the University of Kansas for six years; one of Naismith's disciples, Amos Alonzo Stagg, is credited with bringing basketball to the University of Chicago, while Adolph Rupp, a student of Naismith's at Kansas, enjoyed great success as coach at the University of Kentucky.  On February 9, 1895, the first intercollegiate 5-on-5 game was played at Hamline University between Hamline and the School of Agriculture, which was affiliated with the University of Minnesota.  The School of Agriculture won; the final score was 9 to 3.

In 1905, recurrent injuries on the football field prompted then President Theodore Roosevelt to suggest that colleges form a governing body, which resulted in the creation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS). In 1910, that body would change its name to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, most commonly known as the NCAA.

Starting in the 1920’s there were literally hundreds of men’s professional basketball teams in towns and cities all over the United States, but there was little to no organization established for the professional game. Players habitually jumped from one team to another and teams played in low budget places such as local armories and smoky dance halls.

In 1946, the Basketball Association of America was formed. Three seasons later, in 1949, the BAA merged with the National Basketball League to form the National Basketball Association (NBA). By the 1950s, basketball had become a major college sport, thus paving the way for the growth in interest for professional basketball.  Originally called an ‘Upstart’, the American Basketball Association, emerged in 1967 and briefly threatened the NBA’s dominance until the ABA-NBA merger in 1976. As a result of this action, today’s NBA is the top professional basketball league in the world in terms of popularity, salaries, talent, and level of competition and the ‘dream’ of getting there is undoubtedly the prevailing thought of amateur players of basketball everywhere, perhaps with the one exception of President Obama, who according to a select few, is apt to be a third round draft choice next year.

Sources:                                                                          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball                                                                                             http://www.city-data.com/city/Franklin-Indiana.html http://www.stats.indiana.edu/population/PopTotals/historic_counts_cities.asp