Basketball is a game of ten players from two teams, each of which has five players. Athletes play with limited contact on a rectangular field where a team can score a goal by pulling a ball through a raised basket that the opposing team defends at the end of the field. Basketball is of completely known and exact origin, unlike most sports that have dark origins. Specifically, the inventor of basketball wrote an account of the game indicating the first basketball game played in December 21, 1891.
Origin of basketball
Dr. James Naismith started basketball in 1891 at Springfield College. Dr. Luther Gulick, the director of physical education, asked James to develop a new game that his students could play during the winter periods when they were indoors. The game aimed to help keep track and shape between the runners on the field. James invented basketball as the development of a game from his childhood, “Duck on a Rock”.
Dr. Naismith has chosen to use the soccer ball to replace the rock because it is quite safe when launched and cannot cause many injuries when it hits the players. The nature of the game was to throw this ball into the peach basket set at a certain height of the wall. James positioned the basket high on the wall to also minimize injuries he had mostly observed near the goals of other sports, while the defenders and players of the opposing team became more aggressive at these points.
The “Conspiracy Theory” Origin of basketball
The “conspiracy theory” was born in 1950 and has become the alternative explanation for the origin of basketball. The theory states that the inventor of the game was Lambert G. Will. He was the head of Herkimer’s YMCA, in New York, and the theory claims to have invented basketball almost a year before Dr. Naismith’s first game was announced. The main test for the theory thesis is the image of the 91-92 game written on it that probably (but not necessarily) implied that there was a team formed before the game of Dr. Naismith.
Developments in basketball over time
An interesting fact about the first basketball is that the game’s fishing baskets had no openings on the bottom. Therefore, this means that every time a team player has scored a goal (bringing the ball to the basket), someone has to recover it by climbing a ladder to the basket. The process of recovering the soccer ball was time consuming since the game had to be suspended.
As a result, a small hole was placed at the bottom of the basket so that a ball could be eliminated using a wooden plug that was long enough to reach the basket. However, the ball could not come out of the basket by itself because the hole was not big enough to allow it to fall, but at least it was more efficient than when there was no hole. Fortunately, in today’s basketball, the hole in the lower part of the basket has been made even bigger to allow the ball to fall through it every time a player scores a goal.
Also, in the first basketball, dribbling was forbidden, and he just passed the ball which was allowed while a player with the ball was in place. A significant development in modern basketball is that dribbling is now part of the game.
