Basketball is the only major sport that is completely American in origin. The inventor was James A. Naismith, a physical education instructor at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass. Because there were 18 students in the calisthenics class for which he devised the game, he began play with two nine-man teams. They used a soccer ball for their first official game, played on Jan. 20, 1892. Through the exhibitions played by Naismith's students at YMCA branches, the new game spread. The small training school has grown into Springfield College and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. At first a ladder was set up to get the balls out of the peach baskets. When metal baskets were substituted, a pole was needed to poke the ball out of a hole in the bottom. The metal hoop was not invented until 1906. A bag of braided cord netting was attached to the hoop, and after a score the ball was popped out by pulling a cord. Backboards were introduced to stop spectators from interfering with shots. The soccer balls were replaced by laced leather balls with rubber bladders, then laceless balls, and finally the molded leather- or composition-covered balls in use today.

The barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters were masters of the fake throw and other trick shots. In an era when basketball was perceived as a nonintegrated white man's game, the team of athlete-comedians was developed from a black squad that played exhibitions in a Chicago ballroom. Their founder-owner-coach was Abe Saperstein, who took them on the road in 1927. Once their superior ball-handling ability was demonstrated, they began to develop the trademark comic style spinning the ball on their fingers, drop-kicking it toward the goal, and head-bouncing it into the basket, with behind-the-back dribbling and blind passes. In 1961 Saperstein formed the short-lived American Basketball League (ABL), which pioneered the three-point basket.

The American game practiced on playgrounds and driveways has become a sport without boundaries. The world governing body of amateur basketball is the FIB (Federation Internationale de Basketball). It sanctions such events as the McDonald's Basketball Open, which was inaugurated in 1987 with competition between the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and Soviet and Italian teams. In 1989 at its world congress the FIB abolished all distinctions between professionals and other basketball players. Some of the top players from European Champions' Cup competition have tried to break their European contracts in order to play with NBA teams.