Basketball is a relatively new game that appeared only in the late nineteenth century. Despite its relative youth, this game has captured the hearts of millions of fans around the world.
1. Basketball was invented in 1891 at a training center in Springfield, USA, to diversify boring physical education classes. The game was invented by a Canadian, Dr. James Naismith.
2. In January of the following year, he also published the basketball rules in a local newspaper. It began spreading quickly among students of other educational institutions and became the most popular game in America.
3. In the beginning, basketball was not like we used to see it right now. Players passed the ball to each other, standing still, and it could be thrown into the basket only with both hands from below or from the chest.
4. Originally, the first basketball hoops were peach baskets nailed to an elevated track, so every time a point was scored, the game would have to stop for the referee to climb up and retrieve the ball from the basket.
5. In 1987-88, the shortest and the tallest players in NBA history played for one team. Manute Bol a Sudanese who measured 7’6” (231 cm) and Muggsy Bogues an American professional basketball player was 5’3” (160 cm) tall.
6. Until 1929, basketball was played with a soccer ball, and the first balls made specifically for basketball were brown, and only in the late 1950s was introduced the orange ball that is now in common use.
7. Basketball grew steadily but slowly in popularity and importance in the United States and internationally in the first three decades after World War II.
8. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the record holder, who has broken the NBA’s all-time scoring record with 38,387 points in his sports career.
9. Wilt Chamberlain in the match against the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962, set the single-game scoring record in the National Basketball Association (NBA) by scoring 100 points.
10. The first-ever Olympic basketball championship took place in Berlin in 1936. Originally, 23 countries were scheduled to participate in the event. The United States defeated Canada, 19-8, to win the first Olympic basketball gold medal.
11. Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks are the two oldest teams in the NBA history that still playing in their original city today.
12. No organization has won more titles than the 17-time World Champion Boston Celtics.
