We know who invented basketball, but did you ever think about why? People often say gym teacher James Naismith developed the game to be a safer alternative to football. That was one factor in the game design, but the real reason for basketball was to have a physical game that could be played indoors when it was too cold for football or baseball. The first basketball game was played on this date, December 21st, in 1891 at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, using a soccer ball and two peach baskets.
How Naismith developed the game is pretty interesting. He studied existing games and their pros and cons. Games involving a small ball often required more equipment, like a racquet, so that was out. Throwing the ball vertically was judged to lead to a game that was less rough than most. But there were a lot of kinks to be worked out. The initial rules had no dribbling, and no running at all. What kind of physical workout was that? And games were slow because each goal had to be retrieved from the basket using a ladder. Read about the early days of basketball 133 years ago at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: D. Gordon E. Robertson)
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I think that the game would be improved by returning to a basket with a bottom, and requiring that the ball stay in the basket to score; this would remove all of the excesses of the people who fixate on slamming the ball into the basket as hard as possible, and increase the skill needed to make a free throw, or any other long-range shot. With a latch and spring mechanism on the basket bottom, the ball could be dumped out of the basket after a score, eliminating any need for a ladder to retrieve the ball.
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