The game of basketball was created in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith at Springfield College in Massachusetts, which is also the site of NBA Hall of Fame.
Basketball took awhile to catch on, however from the start is was a very fun game to play and after some tweaking of the game took place; it was being placed in gyms across the country.
The game as it is today has roots that go back almost a hundred years from the tiny gyms it was played on to the now 20,000 seat arenas where it is currently watched now.
The first organized league of basketball was actually started in the college ranks where teams such as Kansas and Kentucky began to field teams in the college ranks and sooner than later many larger colleges followed suit and the base for which college basketball would become was established.
Today College Basketball is one of the most popular sports watched, especially it’s March Madness tournament which crowns the champion of NCAA Basketball.
High School Basketball was the next to follow in the steps of organized basketball. In fact, during the early conception of high school basketball it actually was more popular than the college game.
The reason being is that coverage of college games was not as prevalent as it is today with almost every sports channel covering the game. High school was very popular because the towns and counties of every state would exchange information in order to follow the sport very closely.
The states that are most well-known for their high school basketball love are Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. Most notably of the three being Indiana, where some of the most famous high school teams of all time have come out of this state. Even a movie was produced about Indiana high school basketball named Hoosiers starring Gene Hackman.
Currently High School basketball is played on a varsity level in pretty much every school in every state in the nation. With the advent of more coverage for high school games due to college and NBA recruiting it continues to become more and more popular.
The current day NBA was established in 1946 and consisted of teams primarily based on the east coast. However, the NBA would continue to expand and they do so to this very day.
The league expanded very rapidly in the 60’s and 70’s as the league became very popular in part due to the Celtics dynasty that dominated the NBA for over 10 years, at one point winning the NBA championship an unprecedented and unmatched 8 straight times. From 1966 through 1974 the team doubled in size from 9 teams to 18 teams and then added another 4 teams after the league merged with the ABA.
The league was continuing to expand and also was getting extremely more popular. However the level of popularity would not be fully realized until two players and two teams would engage in a rivalry that took the league to heights never to be imagined. Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics and Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers would engage in a rivalry that few sports have ever seen.
They played on great teams that often met in the NBA finals during this time. This rivalry of the 80’s prepared the league for what would be arguably the biggest star to ever play the game of basketball. In 1984, a shooting guard from the University of North Carolina by the name of Michael Jordan was drafted by the Chicago Bulls and the league would never be the same.
Jordan would take the sport to new levels not only in the states but across the globe. Jordan single handedly made the NBA arguably the most popular sport in the world in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Jordan’s impact on the game is still felt now as any superstar player is always compared to Jordan at some point in their careers, however many fail to come close to living up to these lofty and simply unfair comparisons.
The game of basketball is one the keeps evolving from the peach baskets that used to be hoops into the international phenomenon that it has become. With the advent of the internet, the game has become as popular as ever.
Any fan can check how their high school team is doing all the way up the ranks to watching their favorite NBA team anytime they would like. The game of basketball will continue to expand and grow even larger and become more popular in turn.
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