The history of
basketball is much easier to trace than other sports. It is clear
that Dr. James Naismith is credited with creating basketball and
much of basketball history. Dr. Naismith, born in 1861 in Ontario,
Canada first came up with the concept of basketball during his youth
school days in the area where he played a game that involved
knocking a rock off an object by attempting to throw another rock at
it. The game obviously evolved from there and began the history of
basketball.
Mr. Naismith taught at the YMCA School in Springfield, Massachusetts
in 1891, where the sport of basketball was created. He was faced
with a problem of finding a sport that could be played indoors
during the harsh Massachusetts winters. He needed to come up with a
game that could be played in and outdoors and one that adopted a
sense of skill and not just brawn. He first developed the game by
involving a soccer ball and two peach baskets, who would have ever
thought basketball history, could come from a soccer ball.
In addition to creating basketball Dr. Naismith became a medical
doctor focused on sports science and was a minister. Naismith
watched his sport grow to become one of the world’s most popular
sports that saw its entrance in the Olympics in 1936 at Berlin and
he fixed himself a spot in basketball history.
The history of basketball began with teams of five and was the
sports standard by 1897. The sport became popular to both men and
women and began to spread throughout Canada and the US. The US
servicemen took the sport overseas with them in WWII and the history
of basketball became global.
U.S. colleges accepted the game and began to have it as a standard
college sport. College basketball history took off around the late
1890’s and the first college game began at the Madison Square Garden
in New York.
Professional basketball history first began when the National
Basketball League was created in the late 1800’s around 1898. The
league however did not last and was broken up after 5 years
providing a rough start to basketball history. The break up just led
to a number of random leagues forming themselves in the early 1900’s
and each was very loosely organized. Ironically enough the first
super team was the Celtics but they were from New York City not
Boston. The famous Harlem globetrotters were also founded around
this time in 1927 and hold a place in basketball history as being
the most entertaining of basketball teams.
It wasn’t until 1949 that two professional basketball leagues the
NBL and the BAA merged to create what we all know now as the
National Basketball Association or the NBA. The Boston Celtics
dominated the NBA from the late 1950s through the 1960s. By the
1960s, professional teams had formed throughout the United States
and basketball was a mainstream powerhouse. Players such as Wilt
Chamberlain, Bill Russel and Kareem Abdul-Jabar all became household
names that drew millions to watch them play as they all found a spot
in basketball history.
National Basketball Association fell off the charts and was
surpassed by football in popularity through the 1970’s then got a
resurgence from the popular Larry Bird and Magic Johnson era.
Michael Jordan carried the league through the eighties and nineties
and the torch has been passed on to Shaquille O’neal, Kobe Bryant
and Lebron James. The history of basketball has never been so
fascinating and it is all thanks to Dr. James Naismith.Author is
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