Info about Sports
basketball history for you
Basketball is one of the most popular sports in all times and there are millions of fans all over the world. James Naismith is the name of the one who actually created basketball and he was a Canadian living in Ontario in the 2nd half of the 19th century. He was a teacher at a Christian Association Training School in Massachusetts, but this didn't stop him to like sports and be a sports person. Since winters in that part of the country were very cold, people felt the need of playing a game, but inside. And the principal of the school where he was teaching asked him to invent an indoor game, so he did. He started working on it and the game's rule in December 1891 and later on confessed he took some rules and principles from other existing sport: "duck on a rock", which was a game he used to play as a child, when one would guard his "duck" from the stones the others participants would throw at him. The first basketball game was played on the 29th of December 1891.
Naismith also took into account some old religious traditions, which he modified and applied to basketball: pok- a- tok was an ancient game played with a full rubber ball, quite heavy, and dozens of players could play it. It was used as a competition and most of the times players would either get killed or injured, due to the aggressive game and the losers were usually sacrificed. In that game there was also a ring placed on a pole, as it is in today's basketball, but it was placed on the vertical. The first 13 rules of basketball were written by Naismith and they are still applied today. Using 5 base ideas and these 13 rules, he created this new game, which was played, as mentioned, at the end of December 1891. He asked his students to play a new game, 9 kids versus 9, using a soccer ball (not a special basketball ball as there is today) and he put 2 peach baskets. The baskets were closed and the ball had to be taken manually from it whenever the players scored, which is different from the basketball today. Boards, nets and hoops were introduced in 1906 and the soccer ball was changed with a ball similar to those used today. Basketball was spread in the United States and Canada by YMCA.