The founding father of basketball is Canadian Dr James Naismith. He invented the game in 1891 when he was a physical education instructor at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, the United States. He was asked to create an indoor game for students to play during winter. He developed the original 13 rules for the game. The first game was played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets used as goals.
Basketball was introduced as a sport at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. The United States men's team dominated the game until 1964. In 1976, women's basketball was added to the Olympic programme.
On February 17, 1968, the world's only Basketball Hall of Fame was opened in Springfield, Massachusetts. The 48,000-square-foot museum features three levels of entertaining and educational exhibits dedicated to the game's inventor and the game's greatest players, coaches and teams.
The NBA (National Basketball Association), the richest and strongest league in the world, was founded in 1946. At that time, there were only 11 professional teams and it was called the Basketball Association of America. The number of teams has since increased to 29, and includes two from Canada - the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies.
The three-point goal was introduced in 1980 when the US National Collegiate Athletic Association allowed the Southern Conference to experiment with the move during the 1980-81 season.
The all-time NBA scorer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, formerly known as Lewis Alcindor, put a grand total of 38,387 points on the board in his 20-year career. Karl Malone is the second-highest scorer and Michael Jordan the fourth.
