A Brief History Of The Interesting Game of Basketball

Basketball is a team sport, where the objective of each team being to shoot a ball through a horizontally positioned basket to score points, within a set of well-defined rules. The measurements and time limits may vary according to the format of the game. Usually, two teams of five players play on a marked rectangular court with a basket at each shorter end. Basketball is one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports across the whole world. One reason for this popularity could be the fact that a basketball match is shorter than most other sports, taking less than an hour of actual playing time. Another reason could be that the game is fast paced and rarely is there a dull moment during a match between well-balanced teams.

It is said that the game is the brainchild of a 19th century physical education professor and instructor who devised it as a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied and fit during the long winters. Dr. James Naismith attached a peach basket to a 10 ft. elevated track into which students threw soccer balls. Unlike the present-day baskets used in NBA events, the peach basket retained its bottom till players realized that retrieving the ball from the basket after each successful shoot was an activity that was not very enjoyable.

The game evolved into the present day format in the following year, with many more people contributing to or editing the rules first written by Dr. Naismith. The peach baskets came to be replaced by metal hoops during the first decade of the 20th century. The ball used in the game, right from high-school basketball to international events like the Euroleague, also evolved to the present-day orange ball during the late 1950s so as to allow the ball to be visible from all corners of the stadium.

The global popularity of the sport is reflected in the nationalities represented in the NBA. Players from all six inhabited continents currently play in the NBA. Top international players began coming into the NBA in the mid-1990s. The extremely popular NBA Playoffs is an elimination tournament among sixteen teams in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference, which decides the final four teams who will play in the Conference Finals.

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