The Game of Basketball and Its Evolution From 'Basket Ball' to 'Basket-Ball' and Finally to What We Now Know as Basketball

1892: A Newborn called "Basket Ball" takes us back to the original game we now call basketball:

"March has arrived, with March Madness sure to follow. Fans of the N.C.A.A. tournament know that each team will rack up scores of points, so one of the many fascinating elements to the first mention of basketball in The (New York) Times, on April 26, 1892, was the final point score: 1-0:

The game had been invented only months earlier, in December 1891, by James Naismith at a Y.M.C.A. training school in Massachusetts; it was viewed as “a substitute for football without its rough features.” The Y.M.C.A. played a central role in dissemination of the game, as The Times article suggests. Back then, each basket was worth only one point, and since the basket actually was a basket, a ladder was needed to retrieve the ball after each score.

 

By Nov. 12, 1893, the game had spread across the country, to women’s colleges, and as far as Britain, Japan and Australia. And those ungainly baskets and ladders? They had been replaced with something more familiar to modern fans — “strong iron hoops with braided cord netting” 

 

Within a few short years, the name of the sport would evolve in the pages of The Times from basket ball to basket-ball and then basketball."

 

Summing Up

 

Enjoy March Madness.

 

"Basket Ball" has come a long way.

 

Some of it has been for the good, and some for the bad, but mostly it's been good.

 

Let's hope your favorite team wins the rest of its games, and at the very least has several more games yet to play.

 

Thanks. Bob.