Olympic Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or shooting a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules. Basketball is one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports.

A regulation basketball hoop consists of a rim 18 inches in diameter and 10 feet high mounted to a backboard. A team can score a field goal by shooting the ball through the hoop during regular play. A field goal scores two points for the shooting team if a player is touching or closer to the hoop than the three-point line, and three points a "3 pointer" if the player is "outside" the three-point line. The team with more points at the end of the game wins, but additional time overtime may be issued when the game ends with a tie. The ball can be advanced on the court by bouncing it while walking or running dribbling or passing it to a teammate. It is a violation traveling to walk with the ball, carry it, or to double dribble to hold the ball and then resume dribbling.

In early December 1891, Dr. James Naismith, a physical education professor and instructor at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training School YMCA today, Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, was trying to keep his gym class active on a rainy day. He sought a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied and at proper levels of fitness during the long New England winters. After rejecting other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled in gymnasiums, he wrote the basic rules and nailed peach basket onto a 3.05 m elevated track. In contrast with modern basketball nets, this peach basket retained its bottom, and balls had to be retrieved manually after each "basket" or point scored; this proved inefficient, however, so the bottom of the basket was removed, allowing the balls to be poked out with a long dowel each time.

Basketball was originally played with an association football. The first balls made specifically for basketball were brown, and it was only in the late 1950s that Tony Hinkle, searching for a ball that would be more visible to players and spectators alike, introduced the orange ball that is now in common use. Dribbling was not part of the original game except for the "bounce pass" to teammates. Passing the ball was the primary means of ball movement. Dribbling was eventually introduced but limited by the asymmetric shape of early balls. Dribbling only became a major part of the game around the 1950s, as manufacturing improved the ball shape.

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