History of Basketball

Basketball was first invented in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts by the Canadian, James Naismith. Its purpose was to condition and keep young children active during the winter. He divided his class of 18 into 2 teams of 9. He used peach baskets as the basket and a soccer styled ball to play.  The objective of the game was to get the ball into the peach baskets that were nailed to the lower rail of a gym balcony. He made 12 rule; some of them are, “the ball may be thrown in any directions with one or both hands, a player cannot run with the ball the player must throw the ball from the spot in which they caught it, if either side made 3 consecutive fouls it shall count a goal for the opponent,” and many more other rules. The first game was played on December 21, 1891 and it was played by his class of 18 and they played in the Armory street court. The first public game was played on March 11, 1892 in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was played in a YMCA and about 200 people were there to witness it. Some differences that basketball has had from the old game and the modern game was that they played with baskets without a hole on the bottom and they had to take out the ball manually, now we have a net with a hole on the bottom, back then they used to play 5 players per team now it’s 9, they used a soccer ball and now we use a real basketball, and many other differences. In 1898 the first professional league was founded by 6 teams. It was called the National Basketball League; the first champions were the Trenton Nationals, followed by The New York Wanderers, The Bristol Pile Drivers, and the Camden Electrics. Now a days basketball is played everywhere in schools, colleges, at home and it’s a fun way of exercising.