An
American game that has traveled well is
basketball, now played by more than 250
million people worldwide in an organized
fashion, as well as by countless others
in "pick-up" games. Basketball
originated in 1891 when a future Presbyterian
minister named James Naismith (1861-1939)
was assigned to teach a physical education
class at a Young Men's Christian Association
(YMCA) training school in Springfield,
Massachusetts. The class had been noted
for being disorderly, and Naismith was
told to invent a new game to keep the
young men occupied. Since it was winter
and very cold outside, a game that could
be played indoors was desirable
Naismith thought back to his boyhood in
Canada, where he and his friends had played
"duck on a rock," which involved
trying to knock a large rock off a boulder
by throwing smaller rocks at it. He also
recalled watching rugby players toss a
ball into a box in a gymnasium. He had
the idea of nailing up raised boxes into
which players would attempt to throw a
ball. When boxes couldn't be found, he
used peach baskets. According to Alexander
Wolff, in his book 100 Years of Hoops,
Naismith drew up the rules for the new
game in "about an hour." Most
of them still apply in some form today.
Basketball caught on because graduates
of the YMCA school traveled widely, because
Naismith disseminated the rules freely,
and because there was a need for a simple
game that could be played indoors during
winter. Naismith's legacy included the
first great college basketball coach,
Forrest "Phog" Allen (1885-1974),
who played for Naismith at the University
of Kansas and went on to win 771 games
as a coach at Kansas himself. Among Allen's
star players was Wilt Chamberlain, who
became one of professional basketball's
first superstars -- one night in 1962,
he scored a record 100 points in a game.
The first professional basketball league
was formed in 1898; players
earned $2.50 for home games, $1.25 for
games on the road. Not quite 100 years
later, Juwan Howard, a star player for
the Washington Bullets (now called the
Washington Wizards), had competing offers
of more than $100 million over seven seasons
from the Bullets and the Miami Heat
Many teams in the National Basketball
Association now have foreign players,
who return home to represent their native
countries during the Olympic Games. The
so-called Dream Team, made up of the top
American professional basketball players,
has represented the United States in recent
Olympic Games. In 1996 the Dream Team
trailed some opponents until fairly late
in the games—an indication of basketball's
growing international status. In Athens
in 2004 Argentina took home the gold,
the first time a Latin American country
won the basketball honor.
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