How Basketball Came To Be...
By Billy Bonds
In early December 1891, Dr. James Naismith, a minister on the
faculty of a college for YMCA professionals (today, Springfield
College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, sought a vigorous
indoor game to keep his students occupied and at proper levels
of fitness during the long New England winters. After rejecting
other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in
gymnasiums, he wrote the basic rules and nailed a peach basket
onto an 10-foot (3.05 m) elevated track. In contrast with modern
basketball nets, this peach basket retained its bottom, so balls
scored into the basket had to be poked out with a long dowel
each time. A soccer ball was used to shoot goals.
Dr. Naismith's handwritten diaries of the time indicate that he
was nervous about this invention, which incorporated rules from
a Canadian children's game called "Duck on a Rock", as many had
failed before it. Dr. Naismith himself was originally from
Canada.
Naismith's new game is quite similar to the game of team
handball, which had already been invented in the early 1890s.
The first official basketball game was played in the YMCA
gymnasium on January 20, 1892 with nine players, on a court just
half the size of a present-day National Basketball Association
(NBA) court. "Basket ball", the name suggested by one of
Naismith's students, was popular from the beginning.
Women's basketball began in 1892 at Smith College when Senda
Berenson, a physical education teacher, modified Naismith's
rules for women.
Basketball's early adherents were dispatched to YMCAs
throughout the United States, and it quickly spread through the
USA and Canada. By 1895, it was well established at several
women's high schools. While the YMCA was responsible for
initially developing and spreading the game, within a decade it
discouraged the new sport, as rough play and rowdy crowds began
to detract from the YMCA's primary mission. However, other
amateur sports clubs, colleges, and professional clubs quickly
filled the void. In the years before World War I, the Amateur
Athletic Union and the Intercollegiate Athletic Association
(forerunner of the NCAA) vied for control over the rules for the
game.
Basketball was originally played with a soccer ball. The first
balls made specifically for basketball were brown, and it was
only in 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 in common use.
Dribbling, the bouncing of the ball up and down while moving,
was not part of the original game except for the "bounce pass"
to teammates. Passing the ball was the primary means of ball
movement. Dribbling was eventually introduced but limited by the
asymmetric shape of early balls. Dribbling only became a major
part of the game around the 1950s as manufacturing improved the
ball shape.
Basketball, netball, dodgeball, volleyball, and lacrosse are
the only ball games which have been identified as being invented
by North Americans. Other ball games, such as baseball and
Canadian football, have Commonwealth of Nations, European, Asian
or African connections.
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