Basketball (21194)

Basketball is a sport in which two teams of five players each try to score points on one another by throwing a ball through a hoop (the basket) under organized rules. more...

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Points are scored by passing the ball through the basket from above; the team with more points at the end of the game wins. A regular jump shot inside the arch is worth two points, beyond the arch is three points, and a free throw is one point. The ball can be advanced on the court by bouncing it (dribbling) or passing it between teammates. Disruptive physical contact (foul) is not permitted and there are restrictions on how the ball can be handled (violations).

Through time, basketball has developed to involve common techniques of shooting, passing and dribbling, as well as players' positions, and offensive and defensive structures. While competitive basketball is carefully regulated, numerous variations of basketball have developed for casual play. Basketball is also a popular spectator sport.

While competitive basketball is primarily an indoor sport, played on a basketball court, less regulated variations have become exceedingly popular as an outdoor sport among inner city groups.

History

In early December 1891, Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian physician of McGill University and minister on the faculty of a college for YMCA professionals (today, Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, sought a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied and at proper levels of fitness during the long New England winters. After rejecting other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in gymnasiums, he modified a childhood game titled "Duck on a rock" and wrote the basic rules. He nailed a peach basket onto the 10-foot (3.05 m) elevated track. In contrast with modern basketball nets, this peach basket retained its bottom. Therefore balls scored into the basket had to be poked out with a long dowel each time.

Naismith's new game is quite similar to the game of team handball, which had already been invented in the early 1890s.

Women's basketball began in 1892 at Smith College when Senda Berenson, a physical education teacher, modified Naismith's rules for women. The first official basketball game was played in the YMCA gymnasium on January 20, 1892 with nine players, on a court just half the size of a present-day National Basketball Association (NBA) court. "Basket ball", the name suggested by one of Naismith's students, was popular from the beginning.

Basketball's early adherents were dispatched to YMCAs throughout the United States, and it quickly spread through the USA and Canada. By 1896, it was well established at several women's colleges. While the YMCA was responsible for initially developing and spreading the game, within a decade it discouraged the new sport, as rough play and rowdy crowds began to detract from the YMCA's primary mission. However, other amateur sports clubs, colleges, and professional clubs quickly filled the void. In the years before World War I, the Amateur Athletic Union and the Intercollegiate Athletic Association (forerunner of the NCAA) vied for control over the rules for the game.

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