Sports Objects       by Rayan Hossain

The History of Basketball

Basketball was first played in Ancient Mexico, 500 years ago by the early Olmec people. They used a soccer ball and wooden baskets to make the hoops for the game. In addition, the Aztec and Mayans also had a similar game of Basketball. The difference was they used decapitated skulls of their enemies instead of a ball. But on January 20, 1892, was when the first true Basketball game was played in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was invented by Canadian Doctor James Naismith for the YMCA as a sport to play during the winter. The game consisted of nine players on each team, two teams, which makes it a total of 18 players, just like Baseball. The YMCA didn’t have enough money to make a ball for this sport, so they used a soccer ball instead. The game was played for 30 minutes and the score to finish the game would have to end at 1-0. William R. Chase was the first to score the ball through a peach basket which makes him the very first player to score in Basketball. Naismith created thirteen rules for the game of Basketball: the ball can be thrown in any direction, it can be batted in any direction without using fists, players can’t run with the ball which means they can only pass, no physical contact such as pushing or tripping, you can’t strike the ball with your fist otherwise it’s a foul, a goal is batted from the ground to the basket, when out of bounds it can be thrown back in and resume when the first person touches it, umpire judges if there are fouls to be called, referee judges which team gets possession, time has two 15 minute halves, and the side that makes the goals will be declared as winners . Basketball began to catch on because the players from YMCA school started travelling widely.