The history of basketball

Basketball is one of my favorite sports besides football and wrestling of course. I even play wreck basketball. Basketball has been a very popular sport for a very long time. From Michael Jordan, and Magic Johnson to Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Durant.


 
Basketball was invented in December of 1891, by Canadian clergyman, educator, and physician, James Naismith. Naismith introduced the sport when he was an instructor at the Young Men's Christian Association Training School, (now known as Springfield college) in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The first ball was actually just a soccer ball. The teams had nine players all together. The goals were wooden peach baskets affixed to the walls. By 1897-1898, teams of five became standard. The game spread nationwide, Canada, and all over the world, played by both men and women.

A number of U.S. colleges adopted the game between 1883-1884, but they never played a game live in front of the millions of people that come to the games in the present. In 1934 the first college basketball game was staged in New York City's Madison Square Garden. After that, college games were starting to get highly interested by people nationwide. By the 1950's basketball had become a major college sport.

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 before disbanding; it's demise spawned a number of loosely organized leagues throughout the northeastern United States. One of the first pro teams was the original Celtics, organized in 1915 in New York City. They played as many as 150 games a season and dominated basketball until 1936. The Harlem Globetrotters, founded in 1927, a notable exhibition team, specializes in amusing court antics and ball handling.

In 1949 two subsequent professional leagues, the National Basketball League (formed in 1937), and the Basketball Association of America (1946), merged to create the National Basketball Association. By the 1960's, pro teams from coast to coast played in front of crowds of many millions annually.

The NBA dropped it's popularity during the late 1970's, but was resuscitated, principally through the growing popularity of it's most prominent players.

Some people call basketball "Hoops", but in England hoops is one of there favorite games besides soccer or "futbol" hoops in England is known as croquet in America.

I love a lot of sports, and like I said basketball is definitely one of them. The history of basketball is very important to some people, and it's also very fascinating to me. The players are amazing, and just the fact of how it all started just startles me.