Basketball, the sport that was invented by the harsh winter

The basketball It is one of the most popular sports in the world. Although it is true that the United States is the power par excellence, in Europe a good level is played and Our country tries to take important steps in its aspirations.

And it turns out that the so-called burst sport arose as a school activity where time was expected to be spent indoors, given the limitations of the harsh winter. It was on December 21, 1891 that Dr. James Naismith he invented basketball, without imagining the global phenomenon it would become.

As a teacher in an institute in Springfield, Mass.Naismith was given the task of inventing a game for students to get physical activity in the gym, because the cold in this part of the United States made activities abroad impossibleplus calisthenics and gymnastics were not attracting enough attention.

This is how, after thinking, planning and analyzing team sports such as soccer, American football, rugby, baseball, hockey and lacrosse, he determined that the ideal should be a large ball, reducing contact with passes and also placed two baskets of apples on each side of the gym for participants to throw in a ball to score points and thus reduce body contact by forcing them to make high, soft shots to score.

The first game was a pitch

It was a somewhat different game from the one we know today, since the teams were nine against nine and not five against five as today, with a soccer ball and in the previously mentioned fruit baskets, placed three meters high.

“Most of the fouls were penalized for running with the ball, although it wasn’t uncommon to knock down the man with the ballNaismith explained in a written report. After each “goal” (today basket), a jump between two was made in the middle of the field, similar to soccer, although the practice is already obsolete.

In a radio interview in January 1939, Naismith elaborated on the first game and that it was a disaster in terms of fighting between teams: “the boys started knocking, kicking and hitting on the rivets. They ended up in a free-for-all in the middle of the gym floor.”

This caused him to change some rules, such as not running with the ball, which stopped tackling and hitting, which also reduced injuries. Those were the first steps towards basketball as we know it.

OMCS