History of Basketball

History of Basketball

            Well it’s March Madness and the professional post-season is right around the corner and as recently as a couple months ago sportscasters have named Miami as the national center of basketball. As long as I can remember basketball has always been a very prevalent sport but it never carried any ties. Baseball is America’s pastime; hockey is synonymous with Canada; and soccer is the world’s game. What about basketball?

            Invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith at a YMCA in Springfield Massachusetts, basketball began as a mere template to what it has become today.  Its conception came as a need for a sport of strategy that could be played indoors. Using only a soccer ball and two peach baskets, basketball began as simple sport with only thirteen rules. Yet fueled by the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), a growing scholastic, religious, and athletic international organization at the time, basketball spread across the United States and to many other nations as well.

            As a couple years went by the YMCA did not endorse the sport, as it often created rough crowds fueled by competition. Thus the sport took a turn towards the collegiate and more professional stage. The first college basketball game was played in 1895, FIBA, the international basketball association began in 1932, and the NBA didn’t officially start until 1949 after a couple attempts at forming national leagues (Nation Basketball League and Basketball Association of America). The NCAA emerged in 1910 and would remain as the main overseer for college basketball despite their struggles to fight match fixing and gambling in the 40s and 50s. Basketball also experienced a strong emergence and exponential growth in America’s high schools to the point where today practically every high school has a varsity basketball team.

            Yet regardless of such a strong showing, basketball underwent the racial tensions as all sports did and it found a strong home in the African-American community as well. All communities would come to house a basketball court and urban cities would build public courts in parks. As the NBA advanced and became more socially integrated the popularity of basketball rose immensely in African-American culture almost to the extent where ludicrous racial generalizations were to be made about basketball being “a black-man’s game.”

As the popularity of the sport rose so did the potential rewards that came with it. To many African-Americans it seemed like a chance to escape the inner city and make a better life for themselves however this promise only touches about 3% of high-school graduating African-American seniors, both men and women.

“In 2003 there were approximately 550,000 boys and 450,000 girls of all races who played high-school basketball. If we conservatively estimate that 20 percent of these [athletes] were black, this gives us a figure of about 200,000 black players in high-school basketball, or about 50,000 in each class. … JBHE [The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education] estimates that about 1,500 black students receive basketball scholarships each year, about 2 or 3 percent of all black high-school basketball players in each class.” (The JBHE Foundation. 16)

Bibliography:

Frommer, Harvey. "Basketball." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier Online, 2013. Web.

25 Mar. 2013.

Laughead Jr., George. "History of Basketball." Kansas Heritage. Kansas Heritage

Group, 05 Jan 2005. Web. 25 Mar 2013. <http://www.kansasheritage.org/people/naismith.html>.

The False Promise of Basketball as Young Blacks' Best Route out of the Inner City

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education , No. 51 (Spring, 2006), pp. 16-17 Published by: The JBHE Foundation, Inc

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25073409

PETER ROBERTS AND THE YMCA AMERICANIZATION PROGRAM 1907–WORLD

WAR I

Paul McBride Pennsylvania History , Vol. 44, No. 2 (APRIL, 1977), pp. 145-162 Published by: Penn State University Press

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27772453

"Points Ain't Everything": Emergent Goals and Average and Percent Understandings

in the Play of Basketball among African American Students

Na'ilah Suad Nasir Anthropology & Education Quarterly , Vol. 31, No. 3 (Sep., 2000), pp. 283-305 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3196162

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL: AN EMPIRICAL TEST

NORRIS R. JOHNSON and DAVID P. MARPLE Sociological Focus , Vol. 6, No. 4 (Fall, 1973), pp. 6-18 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20830874