Basketball originated in the United States of America and was invented by Dr. James Naismith in December, 1891, who was a Physical Educator at the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School (YMCA) (now known as Springfield College of Physical Education) in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Dr. James Naismith
Naismith sought a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied and at proper levels of fitness. But after rejecting many ideas, he obtained a soccer ball and two wooden peach baskets. He hung the baskets on the railing of the balcony at the height of 10 ft above the floor at the opposite ends of the gym hall. The objective of the game was to toss the soccer ball into the peach baskets. The first basketball game was played among physical education students with nine players on each side, of Springfield secretarial training class of Physical Education (PE) College in December, 1891.
The International Basketball Federation FIBA (French acronym: Federation Internationale de Basketball) association was founded in Geneva in 1932. Basketball was featured in the St. Louis, Missouri, United States, III Olympic Games in 1904. It was officially recognised as an Olympic game in 1936 in Berlin. Due to the wide popularity, Basketball was played in the first Asian Games in 1951 held at New Delhi.
History of basketball in India
Basketball was introduced in India by American missionaries towards the end of the first decade of 20th century. It was presumed that in the year 1905, the game of basketball was started at the YMCA Calcutta by H. Peterson and J.N. Guaj. The credit of starting and popularising this game goes to YMCA College of Physical Education, Madras in the year 1920. The first National Basketball Championship was organised in 1934 by the Indian Olympic Association and later after the constitution of Basketball Federation of India (BFI) in 1950 at Mumbai, the First National Basketball Championship under the banner of BFI was held at Ludhiana (Punjab) in 1951.
