Although its origins began in North America, basketball has become an international favorite. Around the world, amateurs and professionals alike enjoy this sport.

Basketball was invented by Dr. James Naismith who was a physical education professor, originally from Canada. Later, college basketball was established at the University of Kansas by Naismith, who coached there for six years. The first collegiate game occurred on February 9, 1895 between Hamline University and the University of Minnesota. Since then, the sport has spread in popularity all over the world. Today, people of all ages, genders and races play basketball. From the most novice player to the most experienced professional athlete, basketball is engrained in cultures worldwide.

In 1932, the International Basketball Federation was formed by a handful of countries. Currently a total of 214 nations are members of the organization, which regulates international play of the game. From equipment specifications to game rules, the organization oversees and governs basketball competition internationally.

Mens basketball was first incorporated in the Olympic Games during 1936 in Berlin. Played outdoors, the United States defeated the Canadians. Since then, the Americans have been dominant in the world basketball competitions. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a total of twelve countries worldwide qualified for mens basketball. These teams included: Angola, Argentina, Australia, China, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Iran, Lithuania, Russia, Spain and the United States. The United States took gold, while Spain came out with Silver and Argentina held bronze. Read the rest of this entry »

Modern day basketball can trace it’s origins to early December 1891 when Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian physical education teacher and a local instructor at Springfield, Massachusetts’ YMCA Training School was desperately seeking an indoor game active and fit during cold, snowy New England winters. After trying several different games and finding them too dangerous or not quite suitable for gymnasiums, Naismith wrote down the essential rules of basketball, incorporating some of the rules of a popular children’s game of the era, “Ducks on a Pond,” and then nailed a peach basket on an upraised track, ten feet above the playing surface. Of course, since the peach baskets still had closed bottoms, retrieving a ball after a player scored a basket was terribly inefficient – unbelievably, the game had to be stopped for someone to retrieve the ball with a dowel. And although the first official game was played in January of 1892, at the YMCA gymnasium Naismith’s handwritten diaries at the time indicate that he was extremely nervous about the new game he invented, fearing that his basketball wouldn’t take.

Oddly, in that first official game of basketball, there were nine players on a side and the winning team won a close fought 1-0 battle with a 25-foot shot – on a court barely half the size of the modern day court! By 1897 teams of five had become standard. Around the same time, women’s basketball was developed at nearby Smith College when Sandra Berenson, a physical education teacher at the college modified many of the rules for women to play. As it turned out, Berenson was fascinated by the values of teamwork, fair play and vigorous exercise that basketball promoted and began organizing some of the first women’s basketball games by 1893. By 1899 Berenson’s rules for women’s basketball were published and by the turn of the century, she was the editor of A.G. Spaulding’s legendary Women’s Basketball Guide which spread her version of basketball across the country to countless physical education instructors across the country. Read the rest of this entry »