Basketball History
courtesy of The Free Dictionary encyclopedia
Looking for a way to relieve the boredom of his students during indoor gym classes, Naismith nailed a peach basket to each end of a gymnasium, created two teams of nine players, and thus invented basketball. Basketball was inspired in part by a game Naismith had played as a child, called Duck-on-a-Rock. One month later, Naismith published rules for the game, which did not allow for what is known today as dribbling. In 1891, while working as a physical education teacher at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, and coaching rugby at McGill University, Naismith was asked to look for a way to relieve his students' boredom during indoor winter gym classes. Inspired mostly by a Canadian game he played as a child in Ontario, Canada called Duck-on-a-Rock, Naismith's basketball started December 15, 1891 with thirteen rules, modified versions of twelve of those are still used today, a peach basket nailed to either end of the school's gymnasium, and two teams of nine players. On January 15, 1892 Naismith published the rules for basketball. The original rules did not include what we know today as the dribble. They initially only allowed the ball to be moved up the court via a pass. Following each "goal" a jump ball was taken in the middle of the court. Although it wasn't a rule, players would commonly use the dust of coal to cover the palms of their hands, allowing them to get a better grip on the ball. The coal palm was used up until the early 1930s when the Depression hit, making the raw materials very pricey. Also interesting was the rule surrounding balls out of bounds - the first player to retrieve the ball received possession. Basketball became a popular men's sport in the United States and Canada very quickly, and spread to other countries as well. Additionally, there were several efforts to establish (under modified rules) a women's version; this met with great resistance in some circles and was consequently far slower to become truly widespread. The men's sport was officially added to the Olympic Games program at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. There, Naismith handed out the medals to three North American teams; United States, for the Gold Medal, in a game that was played outdoors in rain with Naismith's native country of Canada, for the Silver Medal, and Mexico, for their Bronze medal win. Women's basketball finally became an Olympic event in Montreal during the 1976 Summer Olympics. Previously, there had been a men's basketball competition, in connection with the 1904 Games at St. Louis, USA.