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Basketball is one of the world’s most unusual sports in that it was inventedby a single person, Dr. James Naismith. Naismith was asked by his boss in1891 at a Springfield, Massachusetts college to develop a game that couldbe played indoors during the cold New England weather. He had two weeks torespond.

His solution was to borrow from a number of outdoor games — soccerand lacrosse included — but adapt their features to an indoor environment.He was even inspired by a childhood precision aiming game. His 13 originalrules of basketball, though adapted in the years since, largely define oneof today’s most popular games.

The game caught on very quickly — the first contest was played in theclosing days of 1891, and it spread to Europe in the 1930s. But Dr. Naismithdid not benefit from it in the same way as a modern inventor of such apopular game might. His fame as basketball’s inventor grew more after hisdeath in 1939. Since then basketball has become a true world sport, popularin many more corners of the globe than it was at the icy New England campus where itwas first invented. Few people can claim to have developed an activity thathas given people so much pleasure and so inspired human competition as Naismith’s invention.

Basketball became an Olympic sport at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. In 1949 the American National Basketball Association, or NBA, was founded. The NBA is considered the premier basketball-players’ association in the world. Some of Basketball’s greatest names — Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird — were on the USA “Dream Team” that won the Olympics gold medal in 1992.

Who is your favorite basketball star?