Born in the USA (Father: Canadian)

Naismith's boss, Luther Gulick, had given him just 14 days to come up with a brand new game and Naismith tried out combinations of football, lacrosse and other sports before hitting the jackpot. The new game was to be played indoors so it must avoid the mayhem of other sports whilst combining their best elements. He came up up with the basic idea of a non-contact ball-handling game with players required to pass the ball, rather than run with it. But how would a score be made? He remembered a childhood game called Duck on a Rock which involved lobbing small stones in an attempt to dislodge a softball-sized rock perched on a boulder. So, the target would be elevated - but what would it be? JM asked the school caretaker "Pop" Stebbins if he had any boxes that could be nailed up. "No" said Pop, " - but I do have a couple of peach baskets...". These were fixed to the balcony of the gym's elevated running track - which happened to be ten foot from the floor. Having established the basics, Naismith returned to his office to draw up the rules and a couple of hours later, with only minutes left of the 14th day, he pinned them up on the college notice board. Although much added to and amended over the years, the original 13 rules remain as the basis of the game.

The first games were very different from today's fast-action, time driven matches. There could be between five and nine players on a team - depending on the size of the playing area - and they could hang around in their own half - or under the opponents' basket - for as long as they liked. No dribbling, no jump-shots, no time limits, no subs. If the ball went out of play then possession went to the player who reclaimed it ( a non-contact sport?!). If a goal was scored - and this was rare with single digit scores the norm (the first "proper" game in March 1892 ended 5-1 to the Springfield students vs. teachers) - then someone ("Pop" Stebbins in the first game) would climb a step-ladder and fish the ball out of the basket. As the game grew in popularity, so the rules were refined and new techniques introduced. Here's a quick time-line through the major developments:

1893 Metal hoop are introduced with closed mesh basket attached. Backboards (originally a massive 6' by 12') are put up to prevent spectators interfering with the ball.
1894 Free throws are introduced after a foul. A team can nominate a player to take the shot(s). This won't change for nearly 30 years.
The first basketball is manufactured - until now a soccer ball had been used.
1895 Field goal reduced from three points to two and free throw from three to one. The three-point shot will be absent from the game for 67 years...
1897 Teams are limited to five players per team on court.
1901 The dribble - not covered by Naismith's original rules- is allowed, but a player must pass - not shoot - at the end of his run.
1910 Early pro team, the Troy (NY) Trojans, introduce the bounce pass and the fast break offense.

1920 The backboards are moved two feet away from the end-line to prevent players using the wall to reach the basket.
1920s The legendary Original Celtics develop the "give and go" offence and the switching man-to-man defence.
1923 The end of the free-throw specialist. The player that has been fouled has to take his own free-throws.
1929 It has become common practice to surround the court with a suspended wire basket or cage to keep the ball and players inbound - players often come off after a game with chain-link marks on their skin. Naismith's original rules stated that the first player to get to the out-of-bounds ball gained possession. This had led to mayhem and the first answer was the cage. In 1929 this is abandoned and replaced with the simple side-line throw, although basketball players will still be called "cagers" for many years.
1932 In a major leap forward towards the modern game, the 10 and 3 second rules are introduced. Before this a team could hold the ball in their own half for minutes on end. Players could also stand in the "key" (the rectangle from the free throw line to the end-line) under the basket with no limit on time. Now a team had to advance the ball into their opponents' half within 10 seconds and players are only allowed under the basket for 3 seconds (at first this only applies to the ball-holder but is extended to all players in 1935).

1937 Games have previously re-started after a score with a jump-ball at the centre circle but now, in another rule change that speeds up the game, the re-start is to be from a pass from the end-line. "Goal-tending" is disqualified. This was the practice of interfering with the ball or the basket as a shot was about to go through or bounce off the rim.
1939 Backboards move to four feet from end-line to give more room under the basket. Also worth noting that on November 28th 1939, James Naismith dies, age 78, in Lawrence, Kansas, where he has taught and coached for nearly 40 years.
1944 A big year for rule changes: unlimited substitutions, personal fouls leading to disqualification increase from four to five and the extension of 1937's goal-tending rule bans defensive contact with the ball on its downward flight towards the basket.
1945 Kenny Sailors (Wyoming) perfects the jump shot, nowadays a basic weapon in the offensive armoury.
1948 Believe it or not - for the first time, coaches are allowed to speak to the players during a time-out.
1954 We've almost reached the modern game as the shot-clock is introduced. A team must attempt a shot within a fixed time-limit (24 seconds in the NBA, 30 elsewhere).
1962 The final piece in the jigsaw, although it doesn't go straight in. The American Basketball League and its successor, the American Basketball Association, attempt to bring a little razzamatazz to the game (and make a few dollars..) and to give smaller cities a chance to buy in to a sport dominated by the big-city franchises of the NBA. As well as professional cheerleaders, half-time entertainment and a multi-coloured ball, they re-introduce the three-point goal, absent from the game since 1895. The difference is that the shot has to made from outside an arc painted about 23 feet around the basket. The ABA folds in 1976 and it will be three years before the NBA adopt what is now an integral and exciting part of the game. The downtown shot doesn't make it into college basketball until 1986.

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Pro ball - from wire cages to big wages

The game originated in the US YMCA movement and took off like wildfire with regional YMCA championships established within a year or so of the game's invention. The early games were rough-house affairs and within five years the YMCA tried to distance themselves from the sport and it was dropped in many areas. The bug had bitten by then though and the players didn't want to stop - and the fans didn't want them to. Many players dropped off the YMCA circuit and formed pro teams who played wherever they could be booked - gyms, dance-halls, theatres - with the players (five a side by now) often having to play around support poles and other furniture - often within a wire mesh "cage" put up by the promoter to protect the punters (some of whom would jab the players with hat-pins as they crashed against the wire). The first-ever pro game is reckoned to have taken place in 1896 at the Masonic Hall in Trenton, New Jersey. The players received $15 each and the game was on its way to multi-million salaries and Air Jordans.

The Celtics were eventually forced to join the American Basketball League. The ABL was the first real attempt at an organised US national league and was formed in 1925 along with the NFL. The ABL folded in 1931 and was followed by various bits-and-pieces leagues as WWII approached (five members of the Celtics were meanwhile touring the country in a second-hand Pierce-Arrow on a guaranteed $125 a game..). A year after D-Day the Basketball Association of America (BAA) was formed with one of the founder members a side from Boston - the Celtics. The BAA promoters ran other sports too and there was competition from the still-existing pre-war leagues. In 1949 Maurice Podoloff, President of the BAA, persuaded the big-city team owners that the profitable way forward was to merge the leagues and the NBA was born with 17 teams from the the major cities. The NBA gradually expanded over the years, due mainly to the short-lived ABL and ABA of the 60's/70's. These leagues gave smaller cities the chance to grab a franchise and also introduced some great innovations like the three-point shot. The ABA folded in the late 70's but not before its better teams had been absorbed into the NBA ( along with - eventually - the three-pointer) which continues to expand to this day. The game suffered a slump in popularity in the early 80s but was rescued by the emergence of superstars like Boston's Larry Bird, The LA Lakers' Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Chicago's Michael Jordan, who picked up $100 million in 97/98..

While all this had been going on the game had been taken up as a college sport , the first game, on April 4th 1895, ending in a 9-3 win to Hamline, St Paul's over the Minnesota Agricultural School. College ball grew in parallel with the pro game and played its part in developing the sport (Stanford U's Hank Luisetti's one-handed shot, for example), although the rules differed a little over the years. A big difference, to this day, is in defence: the zone defence - each player defending a section of the court rather than marking a specific opponent - is OK in college but a no-no in the NBA. College basketball quickly became a route into the pro game (although only for white players until 1950 - see Black and White, below) and the colleges are a vital part of the game in the USA, providing the NBA with its annual intake via the "draft picks".

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Black? - sorry, son....

Incredible athough it seems now, when the NBA was founded in 1949 the 17 founder teams didn't feature any black players on their rosters. Basketball had quickly spread through the black high schools, colleges and athletic clubs, just as it had through the white, but the two colours mainly kept apart - black vs. white college games just didn't happen. The coaches at de-segregated colleges had a big problem: they knew that black athletes who took up the game tended to excel at it - but the mainly white crowds wouldn't tolerate more than a couple or so black guys on a roster, even if ten deserved to play. The cynical rule amongst coaches at the time about black players was: "Play one at home, two away - and three if you're losing" ( although it took until the early 1970s before some Southern colleges put their first black players on the team.)

 
Today Springfield, tomorrow - London Polytechnic..?

The game spread across the world at fast-break speed, mainly due to the YMCA. As dozens left its training schools for jobs around the world, they took the Doc's game with them and, as early as 1909 an American touring team was playing in Russia. The game was included in th 1904 Olympics (all the teams were American) as a demonstration sport and again at Paris 1924, when the Gold Medal was won by the UK's London Central YMCA. Basketball finally made it to full Olympic status at the notorious 1936 Berlin games where the games inventor, Dr James Naismith (who was to die three years later) presented the Gold medal to the USA. In the same year the English Basketball Association (EBBA) was founded and Hoylake YMCA beat London Polytechnic 32-21 to win the first National Championships. It was to be another 24 years before the first national league was set up in 1960 with nine teams. This had fallen to five by 1963 and the league folded six years later. The EBBA appointed a full-time administrator and the current National Basketball League set-up got going in 1972 with six teams from London, Liverpool, Leicester, Sheffield and... the Royal Air Force. The NBL continued to grow, with sponsorship playing a vital role and there are now around 70 clubs playing in national men's and women's leagues at senior level.

In 1987 the Basketball Leage was set up (initially sponsored by Carling, later by Budweiser) to run the Premier League on a franchise basis. The league comprised 15 teams and the 87/88 title went to Portsmouth, with Livingston winning the Championship play-offs, beating Portsmouth 81-72 in the final. Livingston also won the first National Trophy - again beating Portsmouth in the final - but lost out in the National Cup to Kingston. None of these teams feature in the current Premier League which reflects how the league has changed over the years. Kingston continued to dominate the league in the early '90s but Worthing and Thames Valley took over mid-decade before teams from London, Sheffield and Birmingham stepped up.

The league really took off in 1996/97 with a new rule allowing a club to sign four work-permit players instead of two. Sponsorship has also grown hugely and TV coverage increases each season. The Premier League clubs are currently split between the rich and the relatively poor. The salary cap is intended to even things out but is easily worked around and the top-flight league is in danger of becoming a branch of show biz, with half a dozen super-clubs sharing a pay-to-view TV pot. Time will tell...

Mike Jones, August 1998
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Credit:
All the non-UK information comes from "The Amazing Basketball Book: the first 100 Years" by kind permission of co-author Randall Baron. This is a great book, packed with stuff on the history of the game and is available direct from Randy for $7.99 (about £5) plus postage. Contact RB via [email protected].