A brief History of Basketball (Just in Time for the Final Four)
Download 255.89 Kb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- 13 Rules of Basketball - Written by James Naismith
- History of the NCAA Basketball Tournament
- Expansion of Field
 A Brief History of Basketball (Just in Time for the Final Four)
Born in the Ontario village of Almonte in 1861, James Naismith was a hardworking athlete who excelled at many sports, and who chafed when the long Canadian winter kept him from playing outdoors, resulting in added pounds and lost strength. Naismith moved to Massachusetts, where he taught physical education at a small Christian college. The winter weather of New England was no better than that of Ontario, but the school had an assembly hall with moveable benches and a hardwood floor. Naismith concocted a game suited to the room’s high ceiling and rectangular plan, a game that combined elements of soccer, football, hockey, and baseball and that emphasized teamwork and friendly, nonviolent competition. Naismith’s invention made use of a regulation soccer ball that, instead of being kicked, was bounced or passed by hand from one end of the room to the other and launched into a peach basket hung at either end—which gave the new game its name, basketball. First played with nine members on each team, Naismith’s game quickly spread throughout New England, and then elsewhere in the United States. By 1896 enough colleges had formed teams that the first extramural competition was held, but now with only five players to a team. Two years later, the first professional basketball league was organized. In the next few years, with Naismith’s approval, new rules were devised to insure that the game would be played in a friendly spirit. Most important of the new rules were those defining fouls and the penalties for them, most of which allowed the fouled player to take possession of the ball and sometimes to throw it without opposition. Other rules helped speed the game by pitting play against a clock, and not by an accumulation of points, which could and often did take hours to achieve. The game evolved over the decades, with the addition of yet other rules over the years, including one that allowed players to shoot with one hand—an innovation that gave rise to the spectacular balletic moves of players like Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Wilt Chamberlain in the 1960s and ’70s. Important technical innovations to the game came early on. One was the addition of nets to the baskets, which allowed the ball to fall through and be retrieved on the court; earlier, a referee or player had to climb a ladder to pluck the ball from the wooden baskets of old. Another was the addition of a backboard to the basket—an innovation meant not for the shooter’s convenience, but instead to keep fans of the defending team from sticking their arms into the basket and blocking the opposing team’s shot. Basketball traveled to France and England in 1893, to Germany in 1894, and to Japan in 1900. It became an official Olympic event at the 1936 Berlin Games, which hastened its spread to many other countries. Throughout the Cold War, international basketball courts took the place of battlefields, with the United States and the Soviet Union competing neck-and-neck for domination of the game. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s did not remove politics from basketball. In the place of the old superpower competition came rivalries among teams from the former republics of Yugoslavia, for instance, and between players from the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan. Other countries have developed strong teams in recent years, and sometimes in the unlikeliest of places. In recent years, the tiny Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, for instance, has fielded three dozen amateur teams, while the principality of Andorra, with only 86,500 inhabitants, sponsored nine amateur teams while establishing the sport as part of the country’s physical education curriculum. Even the Himalayan nation of Nepal now boasts a professional team. But nowhere is basketball more popular than in the United States, the game’s birthplace 122 years ago. Once restricted to the long northerly winter, basketball’s calendar has grown to embrace every season—and now that March madness has wound down and spring has begun, the NCAA Final Four competition is upon us, as it is sure to be every April for years to come. 13 Rules of Basketball - Written by James Naismith
The rules of basketball, thankfully, are fairly straightforward. However, for the younger players, some rules can be easily forgotten. The three-second rule addressing how long an offensive player can be in the key before clearing out is a good example. Once you have taught the rules of the game to your team, there is a simple way to make sure that they don't forget them. Have them tell you the rules. Spend a few minutes during each practice quizzing them. Make it fun. Additionally, you can teach and reinforce the rules of the game during drills. Before you can teach the rules to your team, you must know them yourself... The Rules  Basketball is a team sport. Two teams of five players each try to score by shooting a ball through a hoop elevated 10 feet above the ground. The game is played on a rectangular floor called the court, and there is a hoop at each end. The court is divided into two main sections by the mid-court line. If the offensive team puts the ball into play behind the mid-court line, it has ten seconds to get the ball over the mid-court line. If it doesn't, then the defense gets the ball. Once the offensive team gets the ball over the mid-court line, it can no longer have possession of the ball in the area in back of the line. If it does, the defense is awarded the ball. The ball is moved down the court toward the basket by passing or dribbling. The team with the ball is called the offense. The team without the ball is called the defense. They try to steal the ball, contest shots, steal and deflect passes, and garner rebounds. When a team makes a basket, they score two points and the ball goes to the other team. If a basket, or field goal, is made outside of the three-point arc, then that basket is worth three points. A free throw is worth one point. Free throws are awarded to a team according to some formats involving the number of fouls committed in a half and/or the type of foul committed. Fouling a shooter always results in two or three free throws being awarded the shooter, depending upon where he was when he shot. If he was beyond the three-point line, then he gets three shots. Other types of fouls do not result in free throws being awarded until a certain number have accumulated during a half. Once that number is reached, then the player who was fouled is awarded a '1-and-1' opportunity. If he makes his first free throw, he gets to attempt a second. If he misses the first shot, the ball is live on the rebound. Each game is divided into sections. All levels have two halves. In college, each half is twenty minutes long. In high school and below, the halves are divided into eight (and sometimes, six) minute quarters. In the pros, quarters are twelve minutes long. There is a gap of several minutes between halves. Gaps between quarters are relatively short. If the score is tied at the end of regulation, then overtime periods of various lengths are played until a winner emerges. Each team is assigned a basket or goal to defend. This means that the other basket is their scoring basket. At halftime, the teams switch goals. The game begins with one player from either team at center court. A referee will toss the ball up between the two. The player that gets his hands on the ball will tip it to a teammate. This is called a tip-off. In addition to stealing the ball from an opposing player, there are other ways for a team to get the ball. One such way is if the other team commits a foul or violation. History of the NCAA Basketball Tournament The NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams, to determine the national championship of the major college basketball teams. The tournament, organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was created during 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and was the idea of Ohio State University coach Harold Olsen. Played mostly during March, it is known informally as March Madness or the Big Dance, and has become one of the most famous annual sporting events in the United States. The NCAA has credited Bob Walsh of the Seattle Organizing Committee for starting the March Madness celebration during 1984. The tournament teams include champions from 32 Division I conferences (which receive automatic bids), and 36 teams which are awarded at-large berths. These "at-large" teams are chosen by an NCAA selection committee in a nationally televised event on the Sunday preceding the First Four play-in tournament, currently held in Dayton, Ohio, and dubbed Selection Sunday, as detailed below. The 68 teams are divided into four regions and organized into a single elimination "bracket", which predetermines, when a team wins a game, which team it will face next. Each team is "seeded", or ranked, within its region. After an initial four games between eight lower-ranked teams, the tournament occurs during the course of three weekends, at pre-selected neutral sites around the United States. Lower-ranked teams are placed in the bracket against higher ranked teams. Each weekend eliminates three quarters of the teams, from a round of 64, to a "Sweet Sixteen", and for the last weekend of the Tournament a Final Four; the Final Four is usually played during the first weekend of April. These four teams, one from each region, then compete in one location for the national championship. The tournament has been at least partially televised since 1969. Presently, the games are broadcast by CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV by the trade-name NCAA March Madness. Since 2011, all games are available for viewing nationwide. As television coverage has grown, so too has the tournament's popularity. Presently, millions of Americans "fill out a bracket" predicting winners of all 67 games. With 11 national titles, UCLA has the record for the most NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships; John Wooden coached UCLA to 10 of its 11 titles. The University of Kentucky is second, with 8 national titles, while Indiana University and the University of North Carolina are tied for third with 5 national titles. Duke University ranks fifth with 4 national titles.
The NCAA tournament has expanded a number of times throughout its history. This is a breakdown of the history of the tournament formats:
Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 255.89 Kb. Share with your friends:
|