Basketball history

Upon discovering the history of basketball, we will most likely refer to the history of ball games, and we will go through the first sporting manifestations of hominids, exercises executed around any spherical shape endowed by the environment. Then, we will find antecedents in the Greek, Chinese and Aztec cultures, precedents that disrupt the history of football, of course, around the use of the ball as the epicenter of the leisure time.

 

How did basketball come about, as we know it today?

However, the History of Basketball as we know it today is relatively modern and dates back to 1891, when the Canadian professor of the International YMCA Training School in Springfield (Massachusetts), James Naismith, devised a sport that could be played on a closed track, to be practiced in winter.

Naismith focused on the mastery of strength and contact skills and was inspired by a childhood game called “duck on a rock”, which was to try to reach an object placed on a rock by throwing a stone. Naismith asked the school manager for some 50 cm diameter boxes but he could only get a few baskets of peaches, which he ordered to hang on the railings of the upper gallery that surrounded the gym.

It was in this way that James Naismith created the sport known as Basketball, the essence of the game, simple, this would be played only with the hands and would aim to put the ball in a basket, where its name comes from, and the requirements of this new sport were expressed from its origin:

 

• Affinity for the ball
• Ease of apprehension
• Terrain Flexibility
• Permanent offensive approach
• The balance between attack and defense
• Skill Mastery

 

The first official basketball game was played at the YMCA gym on January 20, 1892. In 1894 the free-kick was established; in 1897 five players are regulated per team and in 1904 the size of the court was defined.

 

History of Basketball in the Olympic Games

Basketball began as an exhibition sport at the 1928 Olympic Games and the 1932 Olympic Games, achieving the Olympic category at the 1936 Olympic Games. Its creator, the Canadian professor, had the opportunity to witness his creation become an Olympic sport when he was accompanied by Adolf Hitler in the box of honor, in Germany. Women’s basketball had to wait until 1976 for admission as an Olympic sport.

In 1932 the FIBA ​​(Fédération Internationale de Basketball) was founded in Switzerland. Who from that moment was dedicated to regulating the rules of basketball worldwide, as well as to periodically hold competitions and events.