Basketball was created in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891 by Canadian physical education professor James Naismith as a less injury-prone sport than football. When Naismith devised the indoor sport to keep people indoors during the winter, he was a 31-year-old Ph.D. student.
As the twentieth century progressed, the game quickly gained traction and became highly popular, first in
America
and then across the world. When basketball became popular in
American universities, it became a professional sport.
By the turn of the century, the
National Basketball Association (NBA), which was created in 1946, had grown into a
multibillion-dollar enterprise, and basketball had become engrained in
American
culture.
James Naismith is a physical education instructor at the Springfield, Massachusetts-based
YMCA International Training School. His boss informed Naismith that he needed to create an indoor sports game to help athletes stay in shape throughout the winter.
The game consisted of peach baskets and a soccer ball. For the new game, he drafted
13 rules. He divided his eighteen-student class into two groups, each with
nine players, and began teaching them the foundations of his new sport.
The goal of the game was to toss the basketball
into the fruit baskets that were fastened to the gym balcony's lower railing. The game was stopped every time a point was scored so that the janitor might get a ladder and go get the ball. After some time has passed, The fruit baskets' bottoms were removed. On March 11, 1892, the first public
basketball game was held in Springfield, Massachusetts.
