The history of basketball is much easier to trace than that of 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 in school in the area where he played a game that consisted of throwing a stone from an object while trying to throw another stone at it. . The game obviously evolved from there and the history of basketball began.
Mr. Naismith taught at the YMCA School in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, where the sport of basketball was created. He was faced with the 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 outdoors and outdoors and that would embrace a sense of skill and not just strength. He first developed the game involving a soccer ball and two peach baskets, who ever would have thought of basketball history, it could come from a soccer ball.
In addition to creating basketball, Dr. Naismith became a sports science physician and minister. Naismith saw his sport grow to become one of the most popular sports in the world which saw its entry into the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and established a place in basketball history.
The history of basketball began with teams of five and was the sporting standard in 1897. The sport became popular for both men and women and began to spread throughout Canada and the United States. The American military brought the sport overseas with them in World War II and the history of basketball went global.
American universities accepted the game and began to have it as a standard collegiate sport. The history of college basketball took off in the late 1890s and the first college game began at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The history of professional basketball began when the National Basketball League was created in the late 1800s, around 1898. However, the league did not last and was dissolved after 5 years, which was a difficult beginning for the history of basketball. The breakup only led to several random leagues forming in the early 1900s and each of them was very loosely organized. Ironically, 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 occupy a place in basketball history as 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 now know 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 across the United States, and basketball was a mainstream powerhouse. Players like Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russel, and Kareem Abdul-Jabar became household names that drew millions to watch them play as they all found a place in basketball history.
The National Basketball Association fell off the charts and was surpassed by soccer in popularity during the 1970s and then re-emerged from the popular era of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Michael Jordan led the league through the 1980s and 1990s and the torch has gone 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.