Basketball
7 Facts You Didn't Know About Basketball
7 Facts You Didn't Know About Basketball
Previous Red Bull Reign Kuwait game
© Ryan Taylor
No one said basketball was easy – it takes endurance, team spirit and great skills to outscore opponents and win the game. In a basketball game, there are two teams, a rectangular court, a ball and a referee. However, more interestingly, there are facts we think you never might have come across.
Here are 7 historic facts we thought could be interesting to share:
1. CREDITS TO NAISMITH
Basketball enthusiasts must be happy to be introduced to a name they will never forget: James Naismith – the man who had been asked to invent an indoor winter activity by his boss at a YMCA in Springfield and Basketball was the fruit.
2. THE FIRST BASKETBALL WAS NOT ACTUALLY “BASKETBALL”.
As bizarre as it sounds: it was a soccer ball.
3. DRIBBLING? NOT ALLOWED.
Players never could advance the ball. Instead, each player had to throw it from wherever he caught it. The first team credited with advancing the ball by dribbling it played at Yale in 1897 and the official allowance for the dribble, just one per possession at first, were adopted four years later.
4. THE MORE THE BETTER.
The number of players per side was never specified. Naismith invented an indoor winter activity and wanted a game flexible enough to include whoever wanted to play. For a while, the total number of players was a default 18, nine per side, the same number that showed up for the very first game.
5. NO INJURY: NO FOUL.
Shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or otherwise striking an opponent was never allowed. However, such offenses were never considered fouls until 1910, with the advent of a rule disqualifying a player for committing four of them. That total was raised to five in 1946, in the inaugural rules of the Basketball Association of America (the original name of the National Basketball Association), and to six the next year.
6. REFEREES USED WATCHES.
That is because one of the official duties of early refs was timekeeping. Then again, there wasn’t that much time to keep: the 24-second shot clock wasn’t instituted until 1954, to combat stalling tactics NBA teams had begun to employ.
7. THE GAME’S LIFE WAS SHORT.
Naismith proposed two 15-minute halves, with five minutes of rest in between.
