History of Basketball

"The invention of basketball was not an accident. It was developed to meet a need"-James Naismith. An interesting fact about basketball is they had to use a peach bucket for the basket. And every single time someone scored they would have to climb up a latter to retrieve the ball out of the bucket. Basketball is one of the most popular sports in the world. It's played pretty much every where, and it is also 120 years old. Basketball is always fun and exciting when you're either watching or playing it and you always learn something new. Basketball is also a great way to stay healthy and active. I'm going to talk about the history of this sport and how it began. Three points I will cover are, who invented it, the rules then, and the rules now.

First, let's talk about the inventor of this great game. I found our from the history of basketball website that back in 1891, a physical education teacher named James Naismith was asked to create a new game to entertain the schools athletes in the winter season. So he invented a game called, basket ball. Back then it was two words, but they later combined them because it was easier that way.

Now of course the rules were much different back then and have alternated a lot, but let's go back and look at some of these rules. According to Wikipedia sources, back in the day, once you fouled twice, you were out of the game and you couldn't play anymore. And if you substituted out, you couldn't come back in the game at all. Dribbling wasn't apart of the game, originally you had to throw it from where you'd caught it and you couldn't dribble the ball. Until 1901 you could dribble it only once, and after you dibbled it you couldn't shoot the ball to make a basket. Also there was no shot clock or no amount of time until you had to get across half court.

Now let's compare and talk about the rules that I got from the USA basketball website and how they have changed. As you know you can now dribble as much as you want and you can also shoot the ball rather if you have dribbled or not. You can substitute as much as you want instead of only being able to once. And now you can get 5 fouls instead of 2 and if you get 5 fouls then you're fouled out of the game and you can't play anymore. Now there is a shot clock in college basketball and the NBA, a shot clock is the amount of time you have until you can't have possession of the ball, if the clock runs out and you haven't made a point yet, then it's a turnover and the other ream gets the ball. And also there is a 10 second limit that you have until you have to get across the half court line. If time runs out, and you haven't crossed the line yet, then it's a turnover. I'm really happy that the rules are like they are now. Because I couldn't imagine playing this sport like it was in 1891.

So, we have covered 3 points in the history