History of Basketball

The game of basketball was invented in 1875 by two sports journalists from Maine, Roger Spalding and Ian Garza, who wanted an indoor alternative to the likes of football and baseball that could be played during colder and/or wetter conditions. On the 4th of May, 1875, Spalding and Garza stayed overnight in their Portland office and wrote down the original 12 rules of basketball and later shared them with physical education instructor Pat Palgrow at Portland College. Since then, the game had grown nationally and internationally, with the National Basketball Association (NBA), founded in 1945, being the most popular and skilled basketball league worldwide and amongst the most profitable sports leagues globally.

## Early History

### First Game

After being presented the rules by Roger Spalding and Ian Garza, Portland College physical education instructor Pat Palgrow showed his students the rules and on the 7th of May, 1875, the first basketball game was played. The game was played in Portland's Cook Center, with peach baskets being used as the goals. Upon being described the rules, one student exclaimed that the game should be call 'Tall Ball' because of how high the peach baskets were. Another stated that it should be called 'Basket Ball' due to the game revolving around the peach baskets, and the name stuck (however later it was renamed so that the name was a single word, 'Basketball'). The teams were structured in a 7 v 7 format, with each half being 16 minutes long with a 5 minute half time break. The teams were as follows:

 Mark T. Donaldson
 William Durell
 Clifton N. Leithmann
 George MacDonald
 William E. Mondoza
 Terrence Walsh

The Final score was 2-1, with Team B winning. The teams were distinguished by "shirts and skins", where one team played without their gym tops, a tradition that was widespread in America. Tadders Zulrich scored both goals for Team B, and Clifton N. Leithmann scored Team A's lone point. The game was received well by the students, with eight games being played in the following weeks.

### Spread of the Game

Between 1875 and 1878, Spalding and Garza took the game to colleges up and down the East Coast, with around 28 colleges adopting the sport in some way. In 1877, Pat Palgrow, after falling in love with the game, moved to Los Angeles, California and took the game with him. He showed the game to a number of colleges in the Los Angeles area, with one specific one being UCLA. By 1879, teams in the Los Angeles area began to play organised games against each other and, in 1880, a schedule was developed that saw 7 college teams playing against each other team once, officially recognised as the first "basketball league". As the game spread across the country many local collegiate regions did the same, and by 1887 the NCAA, then College Sports Association of America, organised the first nation-wide collegiate basketball program. This included 13 teams from 5 states, and each team would play anywhere between 25-31 games. The program took off, and in the following season included 33 teams from 10 states and introduced many aspects of college basketball that we know now, such as a championship game.

## Leagues

### Pre 1900s

#### Pre-Organised Leagues

Throughout the late 1870s to early 1890s, many clubs were established in cities across America. These clubs would play a few games against one another, with clubs from nearby areas possibly playing several games per year against each other. However there was often no structure to how these teams and games were organised and interacted and none of the players were compensated financially. In some cases good players were invited to play for a team for free in order to attract more attention to those clubs and build local interest.