History of Basketball

James Naismith was a Canadian American coach and inventor of basketball. He invented this sport in 1891 in Springfield Massachusetts. It contained peach baskets and a soccer style ball. He published 13 rules for the new game. He divided his class of 18 into 2 teams of 9 players each and set about to teach them the basics of his new game. The goal of the game was to throw the basketball, into the fruit baskets nailed to the lower railing of the gym balcony. Every time a point was scored, the game was paused so the janitor could bring out a ladder and retrieve the ball. After a while, the bottoms of the fruit baskets were removed. The first public basketball game was played in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 11, 1892. One of the differences was that the peach baskets were closed, and balls had to be recovered manually, until a small hole was put in the bottom of the peach basket to poke the ball out using a stick. Only in 1906 were metal hoops, nets and backboards introduced. Moreover, earlier the soccer ball was replaced by a Spalding ball, similar to the one used today.