How Basketball was Invented
- George Konstantinidis
- Jan 31, 2024
- 1 min read
A long time ago, in 1891, a man named James Naismith, who was a teacher in Canada, came up with the idea of basketball because of bad weather. He worked at a school in Massachusetts, USA, where it rained a lot. When it rained, his students couldn't play outdoor sports. So, to keep them active during the cold winters, Naismith decided to create a new game that could be played indoors.
He didn't like the existing sports because they were either too rough or not suitable for indoor gyms. So, he came up with the idea of passing a round ball to teammates and trying to throw it into a basket on the wall to score points. He wrote down the basic rules and put up a peach basket on the wall. At first, the basket had a bottom, and they had to manually get the ball each time someone scored. But that got boring, so they took out the bottom. They still had to use a long stick to poke the ball out.
After a few changes and deciding to call it basketball because it involved a basket and a ball, they played the first official game on January 20th, 1892, in Albany, New York. There were nine players on each team. And that's how basketball was born!
For a detail history of the sport read this insightful article by National geographic:
Following are some videos that describe the history of basketball:
Comments