History of Basketball

   In December 1891, a popular sport was invented by a James Naismith a physical education instructor. James Naismith invented Basketball when he was an instructor at the Young Men's Christian Association Training School in Massachusetts. Dr. Luther H Gulick a phys-ed specialist asked James to create a indoor sport that allow players to play indoor when the conditions were bad outside. James Naismith started taking ideas from other sports like football, soccer, and hockey and created the beautiful sport. The funny thing about basketball is that they didn’t have a ball designed for the game and instead used a soccer ball.

At the beginning James decided to allow 9 players to play in a game and created 13 fundamental rules of the game for every one to follow. In 1897, James decided to change the number of players from 9 to 5, which is the standard players allowed to play in modern basketball. The reason why James decided to lower the number of players was because he wanted the game to be fast and wanted to see lots of points in the scoreboard. That made Basketball very entertaining at the moment and later on turned into a fabulous sport.  The game spread all over the world and many countries starter playing the beautiful game. Basketball became a major college sport in the early 1950s, and took one step forward in playing in a professional level.

The National Basketball League was the first professional league and was formed in 1898. It was establish to protect the safety of the player because the game increased its intensity. One of the first professional teams that dominated the game was the original Celtics. The National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America joined and created what is now known as the National Basketball Association (NBA).

The NBA suffered a drop in popularity during the late 1970s but it got its form back because of talent players that did unexpected plays.. Some talented players were two rival players, Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers, and  Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics, and both increased basketball popularity to the fullest. The Bulls were the team to beat in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the reason why the Bulls were so powerful was because of a now retired basketball player, Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan is for me and many others the best player all time. After that basketball was really popular and maintained its popularity.         

If you want to read more about the History of Basketball click links below:

http://www.kansasheritage.org/people/naismith.html
http://www.history-of-basketball.com/history.htm
http://www.betterbasketball.com/history-of-basketball/