Today’s Google Doodle is an animation of characters shooting free throws at a basketball net on the main page of Google.com. The company changes their Google Doodles each day to celebrate people, inventions and events that have transformed the way we live our lives. Honoring James Naismith is especially important given the global accessibility of the game of basketball these days.
Basketball is not only popular in American sports; it is also popular the world over. While football (or soccer) remains the most accessible and played sport throughout the world, basketball is a strong second as the game has fans from all over the world that watch games in different leagues.
While the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Division 1 NCAA College Basketball remains significant to American sports, there is also a growing Chinese and European leagues that have professional basketball games with incredible talent as well. Many former NBA players either halfway through or at the end of their NBA careers will often move over to playing professional basketball overseas at either the Chinese or European leagues.
Conversely, many players start out in Europe or China and then either enter the NBA draft or tryout for specific teams in the NBA. The game of basketball has not changed much since it was developed by Naismith, the only major difference is now that basketball is the fastest growing sport around the world.
James Naismith invented basketball in 1891, while he was a gym teacher at the YMCA college in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was a teacher that was also studying to be a physician. The administration at his school directed him to develop a sports game that can be played in doors in order to keep students away from the bitter cold days of winter.
Naismith only had two weeks to develop the idea which eventually became the rules and regulations of playing the new sport of basketball. The sport was attractive because it is a contact sport that does not deliver an overload of excessive hits from opposing teams, and basketball is something that can be played alone or with a team.
It seemed that the creation of basketball was the idea for the administration at the college, and Naismith may not have been aware of how successful this idea would become in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Dr. James Naismith implemented 10 core rules for the game of basketball. The first game was played on December 21, 1891.
The game originally used peach baskets set at 10 feet high as goal posts. The following year, basketball was being considered a sport that can be played at colleges and universities around the United States and Canada. Google Doodle is honoring Naismith today because it is the anniversary of a newspaper article that Naismith had written that became the first piece of literature on the game of basketball.
In 1936, basketball had become an Olympic sport and Naismith got the opportunity to toss the first tip-off. He also published a book describing the history and creative process he went through while determining the various aspects of the rules and operations of how basketball should be played.