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 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.
The peach baskets were used until 1906 when they
were finally replaced by metal hoops with backboards. A further change was soon
made, so the ball merely passed through. Whenever a person got the ball in the
basket, his team would gain a point. Whichever team got the most points won the
game.The baskets were originally nailed to
the mezzanine balcony of the playing court, but this proved impractical when
spectators on the balcony began to interfere with shots. The backboard was
introduced to prevent this interference; it had the additional effect of
allowing rebound shots. Naismith's handwritten diaries,
discovered by his granddaughter in early 2006, indicate that he was nervous
about the new game he had invented, which incorporated rules from a children's
game called "Duck on a Rock", as many had failed before
it. Naismith called the new game "Basket Ball". The first official game was played in
the YMCA gymnasium
in Albany, New York on
January 20, 1892 with nine players. The game ended at 1–0; the shot was made
from 25 feet (7.6 m), on a court just half the size of a present-day Streetball or National Basketball Association (NBA) court. By 1897–1898 teams of
five became standard.
College basketball-
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 of the United States (forerunner of the NCAA) vied for control
over the rules for the game. The first pro league, the National Basketball
League, was formed in 1898 to protect players from exploitation and to promote
a less rough game. This league only lasted five years.
Dr. James Naismith was instrumental in
establishing college basketball. His colleague C.O. Beamis
fielded the first college basketball team just a year after the Springfield
YMCA game at the suburban Pittsburgh Geneva College. Naismith himself later coached at the University of Kansas for six years, before handing the
reins to renowned coach Forrest "Phog" Allen. Naismith's
disciple Amos Alonzo
Stagg brought
basketball to the University of Chicago, while Adolph Rupp,
a student of Naismith's at Kansas, enjoyed great success as coach at the University of Kentucky. On
February 9, 1895, the first intercollegiate 5-on-5 game was played at Hamline University between Hamline and the School of Agriculture ,
which was affiliated with the University of Minnesota. The School of Agriculture won in a 9–3
game.
In 1901, colleges, including the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Dartmouth
College, the University of Minnesota, the U.S. Naval Academy, the University of Utah and Yale University began sponsoring men's games. In 1905,
frequent injuries on the football field
prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to suggest that colleges form a
governing body, resulting in the creation of the Intercollegiate Athletic
Association of the United States (IAAUS). In 1910, that body would change its
name to the National Collegiate Athletic
Association (NCAA).
The first Canadian interuniversity basketball game was played at the YMCA in Kingston,
Ontario on February 6,
1904, when McGill
University visited Queen's University. McGill won 9–7 in overtime;
the score was 7–7 at the end of regulation play, and a ten-minute overtime
period settled the outcome. A good turnout of spectators watched the game.
The first men's national championship
tournament, the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball tournament,
which still exists as the National
Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) tournament, was organized
in 1937. The first national championship for NCAA teams, the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in New York , was organized in 1938; the NCAA national tournament would begin one year later. College
basketball was rocked by gambling scandals from 1948 to 1951, when dozens of
players from top teams were implicated in match fixing and point shaving.
Partially spurred by an association with cheating, the NIT lost support to the
NCAA tournament.
High school basketball-
Before widespread school district consolidation,
most American high schools were far smaller than their present-day
counterparts. During the first decades of the 20th century, basketball quickly
became the ideal interscholastic sport due to its modest equipment and
personnel requirements. In the days before widespread television coverage of
professional and college sports, the popularity of high school basketball was
unrivaled in many parts of America .
Perhaps the most legendary of high school teams was Indiana 's Franklin Wonder Five, which took the nation by
storm during the 1920s, dominating Indiana
basketball and earning national recognition.
Today virtually every high school in the United States
fields a basketball team in varsity competition. Basketball's popularity remains high,
both in rural areas where they carry the identification of the entire
community, as well as at some larger schools known for their basketball teams
where many players go on to participate at higher levels of competition after
graduation. In the 2003–04 season, 1,002,797 boys and girls represented their
schools in interscholastic basketball competition, according to the National
Federation of State High School Associations. The states of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky are particularly well known for their
residents' devotion to high school basketball, commonly called Hoosier Hysteria in Indiana; the critically acclaimed
film Hoosiers shows high school basketball's depth
of meaning to these communities.
There is currently no national tournament to
determine a national high school champion. The most serious effort was the
National Interscholastic Basketball Tournament at the University of Chicago from 1917 to 1930. The event organized
by Amos Alonzo
Stagg and sent
invitations to state champion teams. The tournament started out as a mostly Midwest affair but grew. In 1929 it had 29 state
champions. Faced with opposition from the National
Federation of State High School Associations and North Central
Association of Colleges and Schools that bore a threat of the schools
losing their accreditation the last tournament was in 1930. The organizations
said they were concerned that the tournament was being used to recruit
professional players from the prep ranks. The tournament did not invite minority
schools or private/parochial schools.
The National Catholic Interscholastic Basketball
Tournament ran from 1924 to 1941 at Loyola University. The National Catholic Invitational
Basketball Tournament from 1954 to 1978 played at a series of venues, including Catholic University, Georgetown andGeorge Mason. The National Interscholastic
Basketball Tournament for Black High Schools was held from 1929 to 1942 at Hampton Institute. The National Invitational
Interscholastic Basketball Tournament was held from 1941 to 1967 starting out
at Tuskegee Institute. Following a pause during World War II it resumed at Tennessee State College in Nashville . The basis for the champion
dwindled after 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education began an integration of schools. The
last tournaments were held at Alabama State College from 1964 to 1967.
Professional basketball-
Teams abounded throughout the 1920s. There were
hundreds of men's professional basketball teams in towns and cities all over the
United States ,
and little organization of the professional game. Players jumped from team to
team and teams played in armories and smoky dance halls. Leagues came and went. Barnstorming squads
such as the Original Celtics and two all-African American teams,
the New York Renaissance Five ("Rens") and the (still
existing) Harlem Globetrotters played up to two hundred games a year
on their national tours.
In 1946, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) was formed. The first game was
played in Toronto,
Ontario , Canada
between the Toronto Huskies and New York
Knickerbockers on
November 1, 1946. Three seasons later, in 1949, the BAA merged with the National Basketball League to form the National Basketball Association (NBA). By the 1950s, basketball had
become a major college sport, thus paving the way for a growth of interest in
professional basketball. In 1959, a basketball hall of fame was founded inSpringfield, Massachusetts ,
site of the first game. Its rosters include the names of great players,
coaches, referees and people who have contributed significantly to the development
of the game. The hall of fame has people who have accomplished many goals in
their career in basketball. An upstart organization, the American Basketball Association, emerged
in 1967 and briefly threatened the NBA's dominance until the ABA-NBA merger in 1976. Today the NBA is the top
professional basketball league in the world in terms of popularity, salaries,
talent, and level of competition.
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, Shaquille O'Neal and Karl Malone;
playmaker John Stockton;
crowd-pleasing forward Julius Erving;
European stars Dirk Nowitzki and Dražen Petrović and the three players who many credit
with ushering the professional game to its highest level of popularity: Larry Bird, Earvin
"Magic" Johnson, and Michael Jordan.
In 2001, the NBA formed a developmental league, the NBDL. As of 2012, the league has 16 teams.
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, derived from the French Fédération
Internationale de Basketball Amateur, was thus "FIBA". Men's
Basketball was first included at the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics, although a demonstration
tournament was held in 1904. The United States
defeated Canada
in the first final, played outdoors. 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 FIBA World Championship for men was held in Argentina .
Three years later, the first FIBA World Championship for Women was held in Chile. Women's basketball
was added to the Olympics in 1976, which were held in Montreal,
Canada with teams such as the Soviet Union, Brazil and Australia rivaling the American squads.
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 continued
with the introduction of their Dream Team.
However, with developing programs elsewhere, other national teams started to
beat the United States .
A team made entirely of NBA players finished sixth in the 2002 World
Championships in Indianapolis,
behind Yugoslavia, Argentina, Germany, New Zealand and Spain. In the 2004 Athens Olympics, the United States
suffered its first Olympic loss while using professional players, falling to Puerto Rico (in a 19-point loss) and Lithuania in group games, and being eliminated
in the semifinals by Argentina. It eventually
won the bronze medal defeating Lithuania ,
finishing behind Argentina
and Italy. In 2006, in the World Championship
of Japan, the United States
advanced to the semifinals but were defeated by Greece by
101–95. In the bronze medal game it beat team Argentina and finished 3rd behind Greece and Spain . After the disappointments of
2002 through 2006, the U.S. regrouped, reestablishing themselves as the
dominant international team behind the "Redeem Team",
which won gold at the 2008 Olympics, and the
so-called "B-Team", which won gold at the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey despite featuring no players
from the 2008 squad.
The all-tournament teams at the 2002 and 2006 FIBA World Championships, respectively
held in Indianapolis and Japan ,
demonstrate the globalization of the game equally dramatically. Only one member
of either team was American, namely Carmelo Anthony in 2006. The 2002 team featured
Nowitzki, Ginobili, Yao , Peja Stojakovic of Yugoslavia
(now of Serbia), and Pero Cameron of New Zealand . Ginobili also made the
2006 team; the other members were Anthony, Gasol, his Spanish teammate Jorge Garbajosa and Theodoros Papaloukas of Greece. The only players on either team to
never have joined the NBA are Cameron and Papaloukas. The all-tournament team
from the 2010 edition in Turkey featured four NBA
players—MVP Kevin Durant of Team USA and the Oklahoma City Thunder,Linas Kleiza of Lithuania and the Toronto Raptors, Luis Scola of Argentina and the Houston Rockets,
and Hedo Türkoğlu of Turkey and
the Phoenix Suns.
The only non-NBA player was Serbia 's Miloš Teodosić. The strength of international
Basketball is evident in the fact that Team USA won none of the three world
championships held between 1998 and 2006, with Serbia (then known as
Yugoslavia) winning in 1998 and 2002 and Spain in 2006.
Worldwide, basketball tournaments are held for
boys and girls of all age levels. The global popularity of the sport is
reflected in the nationalities represented in the NBA. Players from all six
inhabited continents currently play in the NBA. Top international players began
coming into the NBA in the mid 1990's, including Croatians Dražen Petrović and Toni Kukoč,
Serbian Vlade Divac,
LithuaniansArvydas Sabonis and Šarūnas Marčiulionis and German Detlef Schrempf.
In the Philippines ,
the Philippine Basketball Association's
first game was played on April 9, 1975 at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao,Quezon City.
Philippines .
It was founded as a "rebellion" of several teams from the now-defunct
Manila Industrial and Commercial Athletic Association which was tightly
controlled by the Basketball Association of the Philippines (now defunct), the
then-FIBA recognized national association. Nine teams from the MICAA
participated in the league's first season that opened on April 9, 1975. The NBL is Australia 's pre-eminent men's
professional basketball league. The league commenced in 1979,
playing a winter season (April–September) and did so until the completion of
the 20th season in 1998. The 1998/99 season, which commenced only months
later, was the first season after the shift to the current summer season format
(October–April). This shift was an attempt to avoid competing directly against Australia's various football codes. It features
8 teams from around Australia
and one in New Zealand .
A few players including Luc Longley, Andrew Gaze, Shane Heal, Chris Anstey and Andrew Bogut made it big internationally, becoming
poster figures for the sport in Australia. The Women's National Basketball League began in 1981.
Women's basketball-
In 1891, the University of California and Miss Head's School played the
first women's interinstitutional game. Women's basketball began in 1892 at Smith College when Senda Berenson,
a physical education teacher, modified Naismith's rules for women. Shortly
after she was hired at Smith, she went to Naismith to learn more about the
game. Fascinated by the new sport and the
values it could teach, she organized the first women’s collegiate basketball
game on March 21, 1893, when her Smith freshmen and sophomores played against
one another. Her rules were first published in 1899
and two years later Berenson became the editor of A.G. Spalding’s first Women's Basketball
Guide. Berenson's freshmen played the
sophomore class in the first women's intercollegiate basketball game at Smith College,
March 21, 1893. The same year, Mount Holyoke and Sophie Newcomb College (coached by Clara Gregory Baer) women began playing
basketball. By 1895, the game had spread to colleges across the country,
including Wellesley, Vassar,
and Bryn Mawr.
The first intercollegiate women's game was on April 4, 1896. Stanford women played Berkeley, 9-on-9, ending
in a 2–1 Stanford victory.
Women's basketball development was more
structured than that for men in the early years. In 1905, the Executive
Committee on Basket Ball Rules (National Women's Basketball Committee) was
created by the American Physical Education
Association. These rules called for six to nine
players per team and 11 officials. The International Women's Sports
Federation (1924)
included a women's basketball competition. 37 women's high school varsity
basketball or state tournaments were held by 1925. And in 1926, the Amateur
Athletic Union backed the first national women's basketball
championship, complete with men's rules.The Edmonton Grads,
a touring Canadian women's team based in Edmonton,
Alberta, operated between 1915 and 1940. The Grads toured all over North America , and were exceptionally successful. They
posted a record of 522 wins and only 20 losses over that span, as they met any
team which wanted to challenge them, funding their tours from gate receipts.The Grads also shone on several
exhibition trips to Europe , and won four consecutive
exhibition Olympics tournaments, in 1924, 1928, 1932, and 1936; however,
women's basketball was not an official Olympic sport until 1976. The Grads'
players were unpaid, and had to remain single. The Grads' style focused on team
play, without overly emphasizing skills of individual players. The first
women's AAU All-America
team was chosen in 1929. Women's industrial leagues sprang up
throughout the United States, producing famous athletes, including Babe Didrikson of the Golden Cyclones,
and the All American Red Heads Team, which
competed against men's teams, using men's rules. By 1938, the women's national
championship changed from a three-court game to two-court game
with six players per team. The NBA-backed Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) began in 1997. Though it had
shaky attendance figures, several marquee players (Lisa Leslie, Diana Taurasi,
and Candace Parker among others) have helped the league's
popularity and level of competition. Other professional women's basketball leagues in the United States ,
such as the American Basketball League
(1996-1998), have folded in part because of the popularity of the WNBA. The WNBA has been
looked at by many as a niche league. However, the league has recently taken steps
forward. In June 2007, the WNBA signed a contract extension with ESPN. The new television
deal runs from 2009 to 2016. Along with this deal, came the first ever rights
fees to be paid to a women's professional sports league. Over the eight years
of the contract, "millions and millions of dollars" will be
"dispersed to the league's teams." The WNBA gets more viewers on
national television broadcasts (413,000) than both Major League Soccer (253,000) and the NHL (310,732). In a March 12, 2009 article, NBA commissioner David Stern said that in the bad economy,
"the NBA is far less profitable than the WNBA. We're losing a lot of money
amongst a large number of teams. We're budgeting the WNBA to break even this
year."Measurements and time limits discussed in this
section often vary among tournaments and organizations; international and NBA
rules are used in this section.
The object of the game is to outscore one's
opponents by throwing the ball through the opponents' basket from above while
preventing the opponents from doing so on their own. An attempt to score in
this way is called a shot. A successful shot is worth two points, or three points if
it is taken from beyond the three-point arc which is 6.25 metres
(20 ft 6 in) from the basket in international games and
23 feet 9 inches (7.24 m) in NBA games. A one-point shot can be
earned when shooting from the foul line after a foul is made.
Playing regulations-
Games are played in four quarters of 10 (FIBA) or 12 minutes (NBA). College games use two 20-minute
halves, while high school varsity games use 8
minute quarters. 15 minutes are allowed for a half-time
break under FIBA, NBA, and NCAA rules and 10 minutes in high school. Overtime periods
are five minutes in length except for high school which is four
minutes in length. Teams exchange baskets for the second
half. The time allowed is actual playing time; the clock is stopped while the
play is not active. Therefore, games generally take much longer to complete
than the allotted game time, typically about two hours.
Five players from each team may be on the court
at one time. Substitutions are
unlimited but can only be done when play is stopped. Teams also have a coach,
who oversees the development and strategies of the team, and other team
personnel such as assistant coaches, managers, statisticians, doctors and
trainers.
For both men's and women's teams, a standard
uniform consists of a pair of shorts and a jersey with a clearly visible number, unique
within the team, printed on both the front and back. Players wear high-top sneakers that provide extra ankle
support. Typically, team names, players' names and, outside of North America , sponsors are printed on the uniforms.
A limited number of time-outs, clock stoppages
requested by a coach (or sometimes mandated in the NBA) for a short meeting
with the players, are allowed. They generally last no longer than one minute
(100 seconds in the NBA) unless, for televised games, a commercial break is
needed.
The game is controlled by the officials consisting
of the referee (referred to as crew chief in the NBA), one or two umpires
(referred to as referees in the NBA) and the table officials. For college, the
NBA, and many high schools, there are a total of three referees on the court.
The table officials are responsible for keeping track of each teams scoring,
timekeeping, individual and team fouls, player substitutions, team possession arrow,
and the shot clock.