The Birth of Basketball
By Bret Burquest
Basketball is a
peculiar game. Five half-naked men (or women) compete against another set of
five half-naked men (or women) in a monumental effort to toss a round ball
through a hoop, called a basket, more times than their opponents in a
prescribed period of time.
Men play basketball
to get some exercise and show off. A handful of them are good enough to make a
very lucrative living at it.
Women play
basketball so they can have a place to shriek continuously without directing it
at a husband or boyfriend. Blind people attending a women's basketball game
might mistakenly assume they are in a large room where cats are being
electrocuted.
Basketball season
is almost over. Only the pros, the Lakers and Celtics, are still slipping into
jock straps and dribbling with their hands.
In 1891, a fellow
named James Naismith was instructed to create a game at his
Apparently not
blessed with great genius, Naismith hung peach baskets from the ceiling, got a
soccer ball and told his students to shoot the ball into the baskets.
Since there were 18
people in his class, he divided them into two teams of nine.
Naismith called it basketball
and made a list of five rules.
1 - There must be a
large, light ball handled with the hands
2 - No running with
the ball
3 - No one is
restricted from getting the ball
4 - No personal
contact
5 - The goal shall
be horizontal and elevated
One of Naismith's
18 students was a fellow named Ray Kaighn. In 1893, Kaighn was hired by
Apparently blessed
with even less genius than Naismith, Kaighn
introduced basketball to his students in the basement of Hamline's Science Hall
where he hung peach baskets, with no backboards, from the 9-foot ceiling.
On Saturday,
Nine against nine,
they battled it out.
When it was all
over, Hamline lost 9-3.
In 117 years, the
game has changed a bit. Five players to a side has taken some of the human
clutter out of play and most basketball courts now have ceilings exceeding the
9-foot level, which is a pretty good idea since the standard basket is now 10
feet high.
The only other
sports that are more strange than basketball are golf,
where a relatively sane human being tries to swat a tiny white ball with a club
into a small hole several hundred yards away, and naked skydiving.
***
Bret Burquest is
an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. Contact bret@centurytel.net
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