A history Lesson from Dave. Dave a concrete coatings and repair expert, as well as an avid basketball fan, has resurfaced many, many Basketball Courts. That being said, Dave gave us a little insight on the history of the game of basketball.
Most sports that are played around the world today were developed by ‘accident’, and they evolved to become more sophisticated as the game progressed. In this regard, Basketball is different, because it was actually intentionally created by someone.
Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, who was a physical education teacher at the YMCA Training School (now called Springfield College). His students were bored of just doing gymnastics and callisthenics during the long New England winters, and so James decided to come up with an indoor sport.
Basketball was roughly based on a sport Naismith had played during his childhood, which was duck-on-a-rock. There was basically a target (duck), on an elevated rock, which had to be put down by throwing a ball or a stone at it. So, in its most basic form, there was the principle of Basketball – an elevated target, and a ball!
In those days, Naismith’s students played basketball using a soccer ball, and 2 peach baskets which were nailed to the gym balcony railing, about 10 feet off the ground.
The baskets had no holes at the bottom, so every time someone scored a point, the game had to be stopped for a bit to retrieve the ball. Later on, they made a hole through the bottom of the baskets. The first ever public game of basketball was played in 1892, at Springfield, Massachusetts. It had 18 players, 9 on each team.