THE ALL-AMERICAN GAME
Basketball is a sport for men and women. It all started out in 1891, at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts. James Naismith needed an indoor team sport that could be played during the winter that wasn’t so dangerous. There were many rough-and-tumble games to play outside when the weather was nice, but during the winter, the gym was the only resort. You couldn’t play baseball indoors, for apparent reasons; football and soccer were too dangerous for the gym. He needed something different. “Those boys simply would not play ‘Drop the Handkerchief,’” Naismith once quoted. The young men needed something with teamwork and competition; anything but calisthenics or weightlifting. They needed a game. According to James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, “The
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Details of the game are added later.
Basketball became a huge hit in the United States. Games were played in arenas and gyms all over. James Naismith once stated, “I am sure that no man can derive more pleasure from money or power than I do from seeing a pair of basketball goals in some out of the way place.” This shows just how much Naismith loved the sport of basketball.
Women also started to play basketball. The first women’s basketball team was organized by Sendra Berenson in 1892, at Smith College. Some of the rules for women’s basketball were different from men’s basketball, but the concept was still the same.
Many changes have been made up to now. When the game was just starting, the baskets didn’t have an open bottom so someone would have to climb a ladder to get the ball down. Then a small hole was put in the bottom of the basket so that the ball could be poked out with a stick. In 1906, metal hoops, nets, and backboards were introduced. A.G. Spalding and Bros. developed the first basketball, so that the soccer ball didn’t need to be used. We are expecting many more changes to