Sports Essays - Basketball Physical Education

History of Basketball

Everything that we own started for way back in time.[this sentence does not make sense] All the things have some kind of history, who invented them, where they came from, what they did then, what they do now, and who uses them. Lots of the inventions we have now came from other inventions that we had in pervious years that we modified to work with what we wanted them to. Such as games, they get changed around in order to play a different game. Many school sports, and games played have some of the best history. Basketball is the one that has the most unique way about starting up.

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A man named James Naisimth invented the game of basketball. James was born in the year 1861 and raised in a town near Almonte, Ontario, Canada. That is where he attended a little one-room schoolhouse. He went to school at McGill University and Presbyterian College in Montreal to try and become a physical education teacher. After going to school and severing as an athletic director James moved to YMCA training center geared for young kids to come in and play many different sports. (Laughead Jr. George)

While James was a physical education teacher they had a very hard winter, in the town of Springfield, Massachusetts’s, that lead the kids to be inside at all times. He had to think of a game that would keep them involved, having fun, and to give them a workout that they needed in class. He didn’t know what to do so; he went back to his years as a child playing in the playground with friends. The young kids had a game that was called duck-on-a-rock this game consisted of putting an object that looked like a duck on top of a big rock and trying to knock it off by throwing a smaller rock at it. (Mary Bellis)

He also took the games, soccer, football, and lacrosse and made them into one sport that could be played inside. But since the game was played on a hard gym floor all the tackling and hard pushing were out of the question. (James A Gel)

After all the brainstorming he came up with an idea that would allow kids to have fun, play a good game, and most of all to keep them active. He decided to place Baskets at both sides of the gym and putting them on a ten foot latter so that the baskets are above the player’s heads. The first ball they used was a soccer ball that the class had. It worked just fine because it was the right size to go into the baskets and big enough to hold well with your hands. With his first game being played was just with his class he was teaching decided to make just a few rules to keep the game under control. James only started with four rules for his class to follow them being, 1. No running with the ball in hand 2. No tackling or rough body contact, 3. A horizontal goal above player’s heads, 4. Freedom for any player to obtain the ball and score a point. (Wendy Kagan)

After a couple of years of playing the game they had to come up with some new rules that made things a lot more easier for the kids and whoever else where playing the sport. IT also had to keep the crowd and all spectators able to understand the game without having to play it them selves.

• After a couple of days of the young kids playing the game it started to get easy for them so to make it harder he made more rules to follow. Now instead of just four he has 13 original rules. The rules go as following: The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.

• The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands, but never with the fist.

• A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowance to be made for a man running at good speed.

• The ball must be held in or between the hands. The arms or body must not be used for holding it.

• No shouldering, holding, pushing, striking or tripping in any way of an opponent. The first infringement of this rule by any person shall count as a foul; the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is made or, if there was evident intent to injure the person, for the whole of the game. No substitution shall be allowed.

• A foul is striking at the ball with the fist, violations of Rules 3 and 4 and such as described in Rule 5.

• If either side make three consecutive fouls it shall count as a goal for the opponents (consecutive means without the opponents in the meantime making a foul).

• Goal shall be made when the ball is thrown or batted from the ground into the basket and stays there, providing those defending the goal do not touch or disturb the goal. If the ball rests on the edge and the opponents move the basket, it shall count as a goal.

• When the ball goes out of bounds, it shall be thrown into the field and played by the first person touching it. In case of dispute the umpire shall throw it straight into the field. The thrower-in is allowed five seconds. If he holds it longer, it shall go to the opponent. If any side persists in delaying the game, the umpire shall call a foul on them.

• The umpire shall be judge of the men and shall note the fouls and notify the referee when three consecutive fouls have been made. He shall have the power to disqualify men according to Rule 5.

• The referee shall be the judge of the ball and decide when it is in play in bounds, to which side it belongs, and shall keep the time. He shall decide when a goal has been made and keep account of the goals with any other duties that are usually performed by a referee.

• The time shall be two 15-minute halves with five minutes’ rest between.

• The side making the most goals in that time shall be declared the winners. (Laughead Jr. George)

After bigger and better people noticed the game there were more people playing the sport that never thought about playing. Many people were playing inside as well as now outside on the hard ground, but within the first decade of the game it went through a big change. Now dribbling was away of moving the ball down the court without having to throw it form spot to spot. The team size that could play on the floor at one time got dropped form nine to what we have to day five. Field goals started at three points for anything that went in the basket, but later that got moved to only being two points for field goals and one for free throws and eventually making a three pointer on the outside of the arched line. The ball that they used to play was an old soccer ball but they eventually replaced the ball with a leather-covered ball that was slightly bigger than the soccer ball. The baskets went under a huge change going from little peach baskets to mesh-wire baskets that had pulleys and rope to release the ball to a bottomless cord net with a metal rim. With the new baskets also came the backboard to help with angled shots. The backboard was first made out of wood with a few holes in to make it a tougher shot. After a few years of that they made the backboards that we still use today. (Levinson 101)

About four years after all the changes the sport started to branch out with different people playing. The schools, churches, athletic clubs, settlements houses, and of course colleges, now compete with one another and started there own league. A team from Trenton, New Jersey was the first professional team that rented a place called the Masonic Temple and charged twenty-five cents to get in. While this team was playing they also put in a new piece of equipment it was a twelve-foot-high mesh wire fence around the court to keep the ball from going out of bounces and to keep the fans away from the players. With that the game went on for two decades surrounded by a fence or net making the game of basketball be called the cage game. (Levinson 101)

In the year 1905 seven coaches form powerful college teams decided to make there own league and rules for the seven teams to compete. Three years after the seven teams competed they finally came up with a league called National Collegiate Athletic Association or also known as the NCAA and in 1915 AAU and YMCA joined making there own rules and guide lines. Now days these leagues still exist with younger and older men and women playing the beloved sport. (Levinson 101)

In 1892 a woman named Senda Berenson, a gymnastics instructor, took the game of basketball and change it to where women could easily play it. She took the floor and divided into three equal areas to keep the players confined to one area so that she could keep her girls from getting too tired and getting to sweaty. A year after the new way of “women’s basket ball” was being played. Young girls in the town and playgrounds were playing the game but it was also being played in many colleges such as; Mt. Holyoke College, Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the University of California in Berkeley. (Levinson 101-102)

In women’s basketball they were not allowed to show any body parts besides the hands, neck and head. The proper women of the sport wore dresses that were as long as they stood and most of them were black with a few white accents to it. The dresses had to hit the floor in order to play. Later in the future they made the women wear miniskirts but they mostly stood by the long dresses that make them look flashier. With the extremely long dresses and skirts they ended up with more women having broken bones, knocked out teeth, and black eyes because they would always trip on the hem of the dress. (Sally Jenkins)

On April 4 1896 it was Cal and Stanford played the first women’s intercollegiate game that took place in San Francisco In the Armory Hall Stanford took the game winning only 2-1. In 1901 was the first publication of the new women’s sport three-court basketball. 1903-1905 the game had been shortens from twenty-minute halves to fifteen-minute halves. The game also went form having nine players on the floor to having only six, and also had eleven officials that call the game for the ladies. In the year 1916 a weird rule came in to play it was the coaches were not allowed to coach but only at half time so many of the coaches just stood there and took notes about the stuff they wanted to say in the locker room. The girls had rules but they were not as strong as the men’s so in the year 1918 they rules were changed in a way that they were similar to the guys but not as strict and easy for the women to understand. (sally Jenkins)

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In conclusion you can see that they game of basketball has had a big history of where it has started. You would never think that the game of basketball would come form a little kid’s game called duck-on-a-rock. The game started with only a few kids playing from class and then it started to expand with now girls playing, younger kids playing, and than it went professional. Now the game is one of the most watched and most liked. Basketball will continue to grow and become even bigger sport that many people play, enjoy and watch.

Works cited page

Laughead Jr, George. “Dr James Naismith, inventor of basketball.” History of Basketball. 14 March 2006. History of Basketball. 30 Jan 2008

Bellis, Mary. “Basketball-James Naismith.” About.com. 2008. About.com. 30 Jan 2008 .

Jenkins, Sally. “WNBA.” History of womens basketball. 2008. WNBA. 30 Jan 2008 .

James A, Gels. “Basketball History.” The Coachs Clipboard. 2001-2008. The Coachs Clipboard. 30 Jan 2008 .

Kagan, Wendy. “Naismith, James.”Notable Sports Figures. Ed. Dana R. Barnes. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 3 pp. 4 vols.Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Idaho Commission for Libraries. 1 Feb. 2008

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Levinson, David. Encylopedia of world sport from ancieant Times to The Present . V.1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996.