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Basketball History
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Early basketball
Basketball is unusual in
that it was
invented by one man, rather than evolving from a different sport. In 1891, Dr.
James Naismith, a Canadian
minister on the faculty of a college for YMCA
professionals in
Springfield, Massachusetts, sought a vigorous indoor game to keep
young men occupied during the long
New England winters. Legend has it that, 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
the gym wall. The first official game was played in the YMCA gymnasium
on
January 20,
1892. "Basket ball", the name suggested by one of his students, was
popular from the beginning, and with its early adherents being
dispatched to YMCAs throughout the United States, the game was soon
played all over the country.
Interestingly, 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. 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 of the game.
Basketball was originally
played with a soccer
ball. The first balls made specially 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.
College basketball and
early leagues
Naismith himself was
instrumental in establishing the college game, coaching at
University of Kansas for six years before handing the reins to
renowned coach
Phog Allen. Naismith disciple
Amos Alonzo Stagg brought basketball to the
University of Chicago, while
Adolph Rupp, a student of Naismith at Kansas, enjoyed great success
as coach at the
University of Kentucky. College leagues date back to the 1920s, and
the first national championship tournament, the
National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in New York, followed in 1938.
College basketball was rocked by gambling scandals from 1948-1951, when
dozens of players from top teams were implicated in game fixing and
point-shaving. Partialy spurred by the association of the NIT with many
of the cheaters, the
NCAA basketball tournament surpassed the NIT in importance. Today, the
NCAA tournament it is rivaled only by the
baseball
World Series and the
Super Bowl of
American football in the American sports psyche.
In the 1920s,
there were hundreds of professional basketball teams in towns and cities
all over the United States. There was little organization to the
professional game, as players jumped from team to team, and teams played
in armories and smoky dance halls. Leagues came and went, and
barnstorming squads such as the
New York Rens and the
Original Celtics played up to two hundred games a year on their
national tours.
National Basketball
Association
In 1946, the
National Basketball Association (NBA) was formed, organizing the top
professional teams and leading to greater popularity of the professional
game. An upstart organization, the
American Basketball Association, emerged in 1967 and briefly
threatened the NBA's dominance until the rival leagues merged in 1976.
The NBA has featured many
famous players, including
George Mikan, the first dominating "big man"; ball-handling wizard
Bob
Cousy and defensive genius
Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics;
Wilt Chamberlain (who originally played for the barnstorming "Harlem
Globetrotters"); all-around stars
Oscar Robertson and
Jerry West; more recent big men
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and
Bill Walton, playmaker
John Stockton; and the three players who many credit with ushering
the professional game to its highest level of popularity:
Larry Bird,
Magic Johnson, and
Michael Jordan.
The NBA-backed
Women's National Basketball Association began play in 1997. As in
the NBA, several marquee players (
Lisa Leslie, and
Sue
Bird among others) have helped the league improve its popularity and
level of competition. Other professional women's basketball leagues in
the United States have folded because of the strong backing of the WNBA.
International basketball
The
International Basketball Federation was formed in 1932 by
eight founding nations:
Argentina,
Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Latvia,
Portugal, Romania
and
Switzerland. At this time, the organization only oversaw amateur
players. Its acronym, in French, was thus FIBA; the "A" standing for
amateur.
Basketball was first
included in the
Olympic Games in 1936,
although a demonstration tournament was held back in 1904. This
competition has usually been dominated by the United States, whose team
has won all but three titles, the first loss in a controversial final
game in
Munich in
1972 against the Soviet Union.
In 1950 the
first
World Championships for men were held in
Argentina. Three years later, the first World Championships for
women were held in Chile.
FIBA dropped the
distinction between amateur and professional players in 1989, and
in 1992,
professional players played for the first time in the Olympic Games. The
United States' dominance briefly resurfaced with the introduction of
their
Dream Team. However, with developing programs elsewhere, other
national teams have now caught up with the United States. A team made
entirely of NBA players finished sixth in the 2002 World Championships
in
Indianapolis, behind
Serbia and Montenegro, Argentina, Germany,
New Zealand and Spain. In
the
2004 Olympics, the United States' Dream Team lost their first game
in history to the
Puerto Rican National Basketball Team and eventually came in third
after Argentina and Italy.
Women's basketball was
added to the Olympics in 1976, with
teams such as Brazil and Australia rivaling the American squads.
World-wide, basketball
tournaments are held for all age levels, from five- to six-year-olds
(called biddy-biddy), to high school, college, and the
professional leagues. Tournaments are held at each level for both boys
and girls.
The global popularity of
the sport is reflected in the nationalities represented in the NBA. Here
are just a few of the outstanding international players who have played
or still play in the NBA:
Argentina's
Manu Ginobili;
Serbia and Montenegro's
Vlade Divac, and
Peja Stojaković; Croatia's
Toni Kukoč and
Dražen Petrović; Russia's
Andrei Kirilenko;
Lithuania's
Arvydas Sabonis and
Sarunas Marciulionis; Germany's
Dirk Nowitzki;
Puerto Rico's
Carlos Arroyo; China's
Yao
Ming;
Canada's
Steve Nash;
Australia's
Luc Longley and Spain's
Pau
Gasol. Many outstanding international players, including
Serbia and Montenegro's
Dejan Bodiroga, past Olympian
Oscar Schmidt of Brazil,
and recent
Lithuanian Olympian
Sarunas Jasikevicius, have chosen to decline NBA opportunities.
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