Basketball, from the British Perspective

Basketball - a British perspective.

Contrary to popular opinion, snogging in a car at a drive-in movie is not the only sport that was invented by an American; basketball preceded it by several decades!

Back in 1891 a Dr James Naismith, who was a physical training instructor at Springfield College (that's the real Springfield, not Homer Simpson's fictional home!) Realise that the long cold winter's of New England were making his students bored and leading them into various activities that were not completely conducive to a good education; at least of the academic kind; so he looked around for a good sport that can be practised in doors, which would not cost a great deal to set up, and which would have the joint effect of giving the student some decent physical exercise in the gymnasium and keeping their minds off matters of a more basic nature. Thus basketball was born; apart from a football which was already in stock the only equipment necessary was a basket that will support a 10 feet above the ground; even this doubled as a receptacle for peaches during the picking season; and pretty well the only rule was to put the ball into the opponents basket without being too rough about it. The first problem cropped up when it was realised that once the ball was in the basket someone to climb up there to get it out again but the human race is nothing if not practicable saw a hole was drilled in the bottom of the basket and a long stick was poked through this whole to whack the ball out again; crude but effective. Originally the beach basket was secured just under the balcony that spectators used to sit on; this meant that the ball was in easy reach of the spectators and an open invitation to young students with a penchant for mischief and it was not long before the sport of sitting in the balcony and deflecting the ball away from the net again just as popular as actually putting it in there in the first place! Things had to change; a backboard was provided to prevent the game from being interfered with, and the latest 19th-century technology was used to introduce the steel hoop and net that we all know and love in replacement of a peach basket with a hole in it. Modern baseball had been born.

churchill home insurance direct line home insurance

The new game became extremely popular and when that happens competition inevitably hotted up as college students realised that amongst the crowds of spectators were not a few adoring and very attractive young ladies. It did not take long however for a simple fact to come to light; the taller the players were, the more chance they had of winning; shorties (of which I count myself among their number) didn't get a look in so it was time for rules to be changed to attempt to eliminate this advantage, a subject which has taxed the brains of a long procession of sports analysts and administrators ever since, with debatable results.

Dr Naismith's original intention was for a simple sport designed to get rid of the excess energy is of a few students; he would not recognize today's basketball with international leagues, complex regulations, Olympics status, multi-millionaire players, betting scandals, and a whole layer of promoters, publicists and financiers all taking their cuts from one of the most popular spectator sports in the world, but hey, that's progress isn't it.

Home Rules of Basketball