A Canadian called James Naismith invented the game in 1891.
Naismith was a physical education teacher, and decided that he needed a new game to bring more excitement to his gym classes during the winter season.
Naismith wrote 13 rules, and then gathered his class of 18 young men, divided them into two teams and appointed a captain for each team. Naismith asked the school’s janitor to bring him two boxes to be tied to the balcony railing at opposite sides of the gymnasium. Instead the janitor came back with two peach baskets. And so they played their first game with an ordinary football and two peach baskets.
The peach baskets were the goals, and a ladder was used to collect the ball each time a goal was scored. The first set of rules was published in 1892, and an iron ring and a bottomless net replaced the baskets in 1900.
In the beginning, basketball games were played with a different number of players each time. But in 1897 it was decided that there should be five players in a team.
© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
