Origin of Sport: Basketball

The sport we now know as basketball has evolved over the years but its origin or creation can be traced back to Dr. James Naismith. In December of 1891 at a YMCA facility in Springfield, Massachusetts Naismith was asked to create an indoor sport for the students to play during winter. He recalled a game that was played when he went to school called “duck on a rock” where you attempted to knock a duck off a rock by throwing a rock at it. Naismith took this basic idea and created a game which had an original 13 rules.

At first there were many things different about the game than what we know as basketball today. A soccer ball and two peach baskets were used. The court was also only half the size than the modern-day court. The baskets were closed at the bottoms so the games were paused every score to retrieve the ball. And the action of dribbling the ball was illegal. The first game was played on December 21st, 1891 with two teams of nine. They played to a score of 1-0. In the years passing the peach baskets were replaced with metal hoops and the soccer ball was replaced with the conventional spalding ball.

The YMCA is a major reason for the global spread of basketball today. Once the game was created it spread rapidly in the U.S and Canada. Soon members of YMCA travelled to different cities in Europe and Asia to introduce the game to people there. WWI and WWII also helped spread this new sport. Soldiers took the game wherever they went during the wars and played recreationally. FIBA, international organization for basketball, was created in 1932. Which helped place basketball on the olympic scene.

The sport of basketball spread in colleges all around the country. But professional leagues in the United States that were formed in the 1920s-1930s did not last very long and were disbanded after a few years. The National Basketball Association(NBA) was then formed in 1949. The league started picking up more and more popularity in the next