BASKETBALL: PROFESSIONAL

Rebirth

As the National Basketball Association (NBA) staggered toward the close of the 1970s, attendance was down in almost every market and television ratings were declining. The public was disenchanted with players' bouts with alcohol and drug abuse and uninspired by the parity which left the league without any dominant teams or captivating new superstars. Revenues fell and interest waned. In what many now regard as the low point in NBA history, game six of the 1980 league finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers was televised late at night on taped delay. NBA commissioner David Stern would later call it "our biggest public relations disaster of the decade." At this moment, however, the league began its return to public popularity. Game six showcased the talents of Earvin "Magic" Johnson, the Laker rookie who, along with the Boston Celtics' Larry Bird, had riveted public attention in the NCAA finals a year earlier. Johnson, filling in for the injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, put on a tremendous show. He collected 42 points, 15 rebounds, and 7 assists. It was a performance that foreshadowed the Lakers' nearly decade-long stranglehold on the championship. From 1980 to 1989 the Lakers played for the title eight times and won five of them. "Never fear," Johnson told his teammates as they boarded a flight for game six without their captain and star player, "E.J. is here." He might as well have been speaking to the entire league and most of its fans. In the years to come, clashes between Johnson's Lakers and Bird's Celtics would resuscitate fan interest and inspire fellow players toward remarkable individual and team accomplishments. As Golden State Warrior Chris Mullin later explained, "what they did, for the player and the spectator, was to give the lesson that you played hard on every play, every night, every season. You were unselfish and you were fundamentally sound. And if you did those things, you won." In addition to the Lakers' success with Johnson, Boston with Bird in the lineup returned to the finals in 1981 and each year from 1984 to 1987, winning three titles. The level at which Bird and Johnson played and the heights to which they took their respective teams enthralled the basketball-watching public and inspired a financial and popular resurgence that carried the league toward astronomical revenue totals, player contracts, and television ratings as well as to expansion in new markets by the decade's end.

The Trey

Looking to spice up their product, the league's board of governors voted to introduce a three-point shot into the professional game at the start of the 1980-1981 season. The shot had worked well in the old American Basketball Association (ABA), leading to higher scores and last-second drama. The NBA was in need of both elements and was willing to alter the shape of the game in order to get them. Not since the narrowing of the key (and the penalty for spending three seconds there) and the introduction of the 24-second clock had the game been so consciously and so profoundly altered. Inevitably, there was resistance to the change from those who thought that it suggested a kind of pandering to the public and represented a threat to the game. Among the dissenters was Golden State Warrior owner Franklin Miculi, who stormed out of the vote and declared that "changing the 2-point basket is immoral!" Such protests aside, NBA commissioner Lawrence O'Brien successfully guided the idea into the rule book. At the meeting's end O'Brien gushed, "I think that I shall never see a thing more lovely than a three." In what began as a one-year trial, the three-point line was established at 22 feet from the basket in the corners and 23 feet 9 inches at the top of the arc. Teams and players alike were slow to understand and exploit the significance of the new rule, thinking of it mainly as a desperation shot at the end of games. In its first year of existence teams collectively took just over 5,000 shots from three-point land, making 28 percent of them. The Boston Celtics, who would post the league's best record and win the championshio over Houston, were quick to realize that this new shot had strategic benefits. It opened up the middle of the court for their dominant inside players and forced the opposition to play more honest man-to-man defense. They began shooting the shot in the course of their regular offense and had the league's most efficient shooter from "downtown" in Chris Ford. Fans were excited by the new rule and its potential to infuse games with drama at any moment. The rule also provided an opportunity for experienced ABA transplants to succeed in the NBA. The Celtics' successful approach to the shot was soon mimicked by other clubs, and the one-year trial became an established part of the NBA game. By the end of the 1980s teams collectively attempted more than 13,400 threes a season and hit nearly one-third of them. Efficient three-point marksmen like Dale Ellis and Danny Ainge managed to extend their careers well into the 1990s because of their ability to "knock down the trey" consistently.

All But Unstoppable

In stark contrast to the flash and hype surrounding Johnson and Bird stood the relentless rebounder and scorer Moses Malone. Malone dominated the backboards and thought of the lane as his territory. "I love to rebound," said Malone. "Scorers will have off nights. But the boards. They'll be there." One of the few players to make the jump from high school straight to the professional ranks, Malone felt he had something to prove and set about proving it every night. Without a college education he was often considered slow or unpolished by reporters who mistook his reticence for dimwittedness. But he understood the workings of the game as well as any other player of his time, and he understood the nature of the challenges he faced like no one else: "people thought we [those players who skipped college] had problems and that's why I didn't go to college. But they're the fools. We had to have strong minds to do what we did…All along, I thought that if I make mistakes, it's going to be me that makes 'em." Malone's determination propelled the underdog Houston Rockets to the NBA finals in 1981, where they were defeated in six games despite Malone's efforts. His teammates at the time recognized Malone's talents and were the first to speak of his place in history. "When my grandkids grow up, I'm going to tell them about this big fella," said guard Robert Reid. "By then he'll be known as the best of them all." Malone won the league's MVP award in 1980 and again in 1982, but he was unable to win a championship in Houston. In 1982 he became a free agent. Remarkably, there were no bids for Malone's services, and he did not find a new home until he was traded to Philadelphia before the start of the 1982—1983 season. Upon his arrival in Philadelphia Malone assured 76er fans and the media that they were in good hands. "I can do so many things," he said. Eager to fit in with an already impressive team, Malone explained that it was still Julius Erving's team and that he was just there to "work hard." The combination of Malone's inside strength and Erving's play in the open court made Philadelphia nearly unstoppable. They rolled through the regular season and marched toward the playoffs. Asked to predict their performance in the postseason, Malone responded, Fo', fo' and fo," to indicate that they were untouchable and would not lose a single game. He was not far off. With the exception of a second-round loss to Milwaukee, the Sixers played flawlessly in capturing their first championship since 1967. Malone would stay with Philadelphia through 1986 and then play four productive years with the Washington Bullets before slowing down in the early 1990s. By the time he retired Malone had established himself as one of the game's all-time greats. He played in eleven All-Star games and won three MVP awards and five rebounding titles.

Direction

NBA commissioner Lawrence O'Brien stepped down after the 1983 season and was replaced by his executive vice president, David Stern. If one half of the league's formula for renewal was found on the court in the figures of Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan, the other half lay in David Stern's vision and determination. At the time, the league's gross nonretail revenue, including ticket sales and television fees, was $160 million. By the close of the 1980s that figure would reach $500 million and was augmented by a staggering $750 million in gross retail revenues. While the game was thriving on the court, Stern made sure the league was also financially and commercially successful. His leadership made him the undisputed champion of professional sports commissioners. Looking back on Stern's tenure, E. M. Swift suggested that the former lawyer "reshaped a floundering, financially strapped league into an entity that is the envy of professional sports—an innovative, multifaceted, billion-dollar global marketing and entertainment company whose future literally knows no bounds." He accomplished this by stressing innovation and improvement. After the 1980-1981 season sixteen of the NBA's twenty-three teams lost money, and teams played to an average of only 10,201 fans per game, only a little more than 50 percent of capacity. The commissioner's office had one person working in public relations, and advertisers wanted nothing to do with the league. From the beginning Stern brought a determinedly progressive perspective to bear upon the workings of the league. As Richard Bloch, part owner of the Phoenix Suns, suggested, "David changed the direction of the league." Stern charmed a fractured group of team owners and players into forming alliances and rethinking the way they conducted business. Creating a Team Services division to monitor the workings and public relations of individual franchises, Stern managed to package the league as a single product. Perhaps the most crucial element in this packaging was negotiated by Stern before assuming the commissioner's post. In search of a financial agreement between players and owners which would ensure the survival of all NBA teams, the league and the Players Association agreed to a salary cap under which players received 53 percent of gross revenues and the owners 47 percent. As Charles Grantham, onetime head of the NBA Players Association, indicated, the cap was

RECONSTRUCTED KNEES AND EGOS

On 23 March 1985 New York Knicks star forward Bernard King made such a powerful turn toward the basket that, in the words of sportswriter Bruce Newman, "he simply ran out of his knee the way someone else might twist out of his shoe." At the time of his injury King was leading the National Basketball Association (NBA) in scoring, and the diagnosis of a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) left the Knicks" workhorse shattered. "I cried my eyes out," King admitted. "I never knew how far this thing would go, if I would have to retire because of it." His concern was warranted. The knee's flexibility is dependent on a series of ligaments connecting the femur and tibia; the ACL is one of two ligaments (the other is the posterior cruciate ligament) that cross between the thigh and shin, preventing the bones from slipping out of joint. While ACL injuries once portended the twilight of an athlete's career, especially in a sport such as basketball, which requires speed, explosiveness, and lateral quickness, the 1980s saw the refinement of sophisticated procedures aimed at reconstructing damaged knees. With the development of fiber optics in the mid 1970s, arthroscopic surgery—the insertion of a tubal telescopic lens through a small slit in the skin to survey joint damage before and during its eventual repair—became a less invasive procedure, and advances in physical therapy regimes lessened an athlete's rehabilitation time. The rise of sports medicine during the decade brought considerable acclaim to prominent surgeons such as Dr. Robert Jackson, a pioneer in arthroscopy, and Dr. Frank Jobe, a specialist on rotator cuff surgery who saved the careers of major-league pitchers Tommy John and Orel Hershiser. As Dr. Norman Scott observed, "Tve put out six books and 80-some articles, and yet I'11 go down as Bernard King's doctor. I just hope that in his life-time, Bernard has someone who makes him as proud as he has made me," Scott repaired King's ACL by replacing the damaged tissue with a strip of the tough sheath that runs from the hip to the tibia along the outside of the thigh muscles. The advances in arthroscopic procedures have not, however, lightened the emotional and psychological burden of rehabilitation. Danny Manning, the first pick in the 1988 NBA draft who tore up his knee in 1989, reported his experience: "You wake up with two scars on your legs—you know you weren't born with them. Even if you're no different physically, you're different psychologically." King himself went into seclusion for almost two years ("I felt I had to protect myself emotionally from the game"), but when he returned to the NBA for the 1987 season he once again reigned as one of the game's most creative scorers. By doing so he became a symbol of promise to every athlete who experienced the fragility of the body.

Sources:

Richard Demak, "One False Move," Sports Illustrated, 74 (29 April 1991): 52-58;

Richard Hoffer, "Dr. Robert Jackson," Sports Illustrated, 81 (18 September 1994): 139;

Bruce Newman, "A King Eyes a Court Comeback," Sports Illustrated, 66 (30 March 1987): 32-33.

agreed upon because "players and management were in the gutter together" and both sides had to work together if they hoped to survive. Stern then set about the task of revitalizing the league's relationship with its fans. He understood that the league was in the entertainment business and worked to woo a large and loyal audience. Borrowing ideas from the ABA and Major League baseball, the NBA turned its All-Star game into a fan-friendly extravaganza, complete with slam-dunk and three-point-shooting contests and an old-timers' game. By the end of the 1980s it was clear that the changes had paid off. The league broke its attendance record seven straight years; player salaries rose 177 percent (from an average of $325,000 to $900,000 by decade's end), and television fees skyrocketed from $22 million per year to more than $150 million.

Draft Boon

The NBA unveiled some of its stars of the future at the 1984 college draft. The Houston Rockets, who had selected Ralph Sampson number one in the previous year's draft, again picked first. They took University of Houston standout Hakeem Olajuwon and began fantasizing about a vaunted "Twin Towers" offense. Next, the Portland Trail Blazers selected Kentucky center Sam Bowie, who would struggle with injuries, later suffering severe breaks to each of his legs. With the third pick the Chicago Bulls chose North Carolina junior Michael Jordan. For years fans and executives associated with the game would refer to Portland's blunder and Chicago's good fortune. Jordan's impact on the league was immediate and long lasting. He won the NBA Rookie of the Year award in 1985. In 1986 he averaged 37.1 points per game and became the first player since Wilt Chamberlain to score more than 3,000 points in a season. He signed unprecedented shoe contracts with Nike and established an amazing career in commercials within his first two years in the league. More important, he transcended the game and transformed the fortunes of his franchise. By the early 1990s he had the Bulls poised to win three consecutive NBA championships. The mark of the 1984 draft went still deeper. In the fourth position Philadelphia, looking to energize its aging frontcourt, selected Auburn forward Charles Barkley. Like Jordan, Barkley was not only a talent but a personality, one who would help shape the future of the league and sustain fan interest after Bird and Johnson retired. He toiled ferociously for the Sixers throughout the 1980s, running the floor like no man his size had ever done before. As if these players were not enough to distinguish this draft in terms of its depth and impact, buried near the end of the first round lay another jewel. Out of little-known Gonzaga University stepped point guard John Stockton. A steady playmaker and precision passer, Stockton did not play much for the Utah Jazz in 1985, but by the close of the decade he had amassed over 4,000 assists on his way to becoming the NBA's all-time assist leader. In response to Houston's consecutive first selections, the draft structure was changed the following year. A lottery process to determine which of the league's seven bottom teams got to draft first was instituted. As a result, the lottery became a popular television event whose first prize was Georgetown center Patrick Ewing, picked by the New York Knicks in 1985.

Policy

While the NBA was making financial gains by the mid 1980s it had not yet fully emerged from the shadow of drug abuse which had characterized it during much of the 1970s. More than a few players were unable to handle the pressures of daily life in the NBA and were incapable of managing their enormous salaries responsibly. Micheal Ray Richardson, the New Jersey Nets' point guard and one of the league's most promising young stars, spent much of the 1980s in and out of the league and drug rehabilitation centers. Upon his departure from training camp before the 1983-1984 season, Richardson said, "I don't want any more part of basketball." That same year John Drew of the Utah Jazz and John Lucas of the Houston Rockets were waived from the league because of drug abuse. Each would return and be suspended again before finally making it back to regular playing status. Such incidents prompted the league to establish what many still regard as the most progressive drug policy in sports: players were quietly granted rehabilitation opportunities in response to voluntary confessions of drug usage; the league claimed the right to test players randomly with reasonable cause; failure to pass a drug test meant a minimum two-year suspension. In 1988 the policy was expanded to include incoming rookies, a practice which was part of an extensive orientation program wherein young players would be counseled, often by former users such as Lucas, on how to deal with the lure of drugs, the scrutiny of the media, financial concerns, and the pressure of life in the NBA. Though the problem was not completely eradicated, it was largely contained, and the league's approach was widely praised and emulated in other professional sports.

Expansion

Eager to strengthen its image and revenue base, the NBA's board of governors voted to add four expansion teams at the close of the 1980s. The new teams—the Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat in 1988, and the Minnesota Timberwolves and Orlando Magic in 1989—provided the league with new life and new sources of revenue. When these teams entered the league, the NBA was flourishing. Within three years all four expansion teams were worth double the $32.5 million they paid to enter the league. Under Stern's direction the NBA boldly spoke of "looking for new places to conquer." On the court, however, things moved much more slowly, for the new teams floundered. After drafting Rex Chapman number one, Charlotte finished the 1988-1989 season with 20 wins and 62 losses. Miami selected Rony Seikaly and Kevin Edwards in the first round, endured an unprecedented 0-17 stretch to open the season, and managed just fifteen wins all year. Neither Minnesota nor Orlando fared much better the next year, securing 22 and 18 wins respectively. However, attendance figures for all four franchises were consistently impressive. Charlotte led the league in attendance in 1988 and was second in 1989, while Minnesota set the standard in 1989. Orlando began the 1990-1991 season having amassed thirty-two straight sellouts; Charlotte collected seventy-one; and Miami garnered fifty-four. Patient fans in Charlotte, Miami, and Orlando were rewarded with playoff teams by the mid 1990s, at which point the league began making plans for Canadian franchises in Toronto and Vancouver. By the end of the 1980s, the expansion impulse and its attendant financial success moved overseas. The league's pledge to claim new territory pushed them into foreign markets such as Italy, Spain, and France. The opening of European markets in the mid 1980s to officially licensed NBA products meant even greater financial success for the league and its owners. "The key thing to remember is that we've barely scratched the surface internationally," Stern explained, apparently unconcerned with what Jack McCallum of Sports Illustrated termed "cries of Yankee colonialism."

Farewell

On 13 June 1989 the Detroit Pistons completed a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers with a 105-97 victory to claim the NBA title. It was the end of an era dominated by Los Angeles and Boston. Detroit would repeat in 1990 before surrendering the top spot to the Chicago Bulls between 1991 and 1993. But the conclusion of the series also closed another chapter in the story of professional basketball: it was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's final game. As the NBA's all-time leader in points, games and minutes played, field goals made and attempted, and blocked shots left the court, the crowd chanted, "Kareem, Kareem, Kareem." The only six-time winner of the NBA's MVP award, Abdul-Jabbar retired after twenty seasons of unsurpassed grace and skill. He was, from the very beginning, a unique combination of athlete and public figure. The man whose Muslim name means "generous and powerful servant of Allah" towered above the league for much of his career and outlasted several prominent players who began and ended their own basketball careers during the course of his tenure. In addition to his longevity, it was his integrity that characterized Abdul-Jabbar as a player and a man. More comfortable in a redwood forest than in a crowd of people, he confounded the media and the public by making political statements and gestures but usually refused to speak about himself. He went about his business in a quiet manner that some interpreted as aloof. Though he may have lacked the charisma of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, or Charles Barkley, his game was remarkable for its rare combination of talent and determination. Abdul-Jabbar "gave his position grace, agility, quickness and elegance never before possessed by one man," wrote Paul Attner. Abdul-Jabbar's full impact on the game was rarely recognized during his playing years. In fact a chorus of voices insisted that the forty-two-year-old center had hung on too long. His retirement was a time for Abdul-Jabbar to reflect on his accomplishments. "My legacy? That I played as well as I have for as long as I have," he said. His numbers were astounding: 38,387 points, 787 straight games in double figures, six NBA championships, and a record nineteen All-Star appearances. He was arguably the best player in the history of the league. At the close of the 1985 play-offs, in which the thirty-eight-year-old Abdul-Jabbar managed 21.9 points along with 8.1 rebounds and nearly two blocks per game, Lakers coach Pat Riley put the big man's feats in perspective for historians and fans alike: "He defies logic. He's the most unique and durable athlete of our time, the best you'll ever see. You better enjoy him while he's here." With the conclusion of the 1989 season, that time had passed.

Sources:

Larry Bird with Bob Ryan, Drive: The Story of My Life (New York: Doubleday, 1989);

David Halberstam, The Breaks of the Game (New York: Ballantine, 1981);

Dave Heeren, The Basketball Abstract (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1988);

Earvin Johnson Jr. and Roy S. Johnson, Magic's Touch (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1989);

Roland Lazenby, The Lakers: A Basketball Journey (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993);

Terry Pluto, Tall Tales (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992);

Bob Ryan and Terry Pluto, Forty-Eight Minutes: A Night in the Life of the NBA (New York: Macmillan, 1987);

Alex Sachare, ed., The Official NBA Basketball Encyclopedia, second edition (New York: Villard Books, 1994).

BASKETBALL: COLLEGE

"March Madness."

College basketball became a national obsession in the 1980s. Once a regionalized pastime, the college game became virtually omnipresent due to expanding cable television networks (particularly ESPN) and the media's rigorous marketing of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship tournament; even the phrase for the championship tournament, "March Madness," is a registered trademark. The major network covering the monthlong men's tournament, CBS, bid $16 million for exclusive rights to the Final Four in 1982, and then renegotiated its pact with the NCAA every few years until in November 1989, when it reached an agreement on a seven-year, $1 billion contract. Capitalizing on the phenomenal popularity of the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird matchup in the title game in 1979, network television poured money into the sport like never before and promoted the Final Four as a media spectacle to rival the Super Bowl. The NCAA responded by enlarging the tournament field from forty-eight to sixty-four teams (beginning with the 1985 tourney), establishing a 45-second shot clock to eliminate stalling (1986), and introducing a three-point shot at 19 feet 9 inches (1987), changes designed to increase scoring, competitiveness, and fan appeal. The title games were close throughout the decade, each contest seemingly undetermined until the final nerve-wracking moments. Only then did a misthrown pass, an improbable shot, or a couple of clutch free throws decide the issue.

The Women's Game

The decade also saw a marked increase in the popularity of women's basketball, bolstered in part by the dazzling grace and physical prowess of players such as Kansas's Lynette Woodard, Southern California's Cheryl Miller, and Texas's Clarissa Davis. While the women's game cultivated a new, more athletic image, it lacked the media attention enjoyed by the men's game; in fact, negotiations over television rights proved divisive early in the decade. The Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), a student- and women-centered organization that put on the first national championship for women in 1972, collapsed under the NCAA's renewed interest in women's basketball, which was motivated in part by the mandates of Title IX. Because the NCAA could offer a women's tournament package that included promises for more television exposure and program expansion, many of the top women's teams shifted their allegiance from the AIAW to the NCAA. After some intense rhetoric and a series of lawsuits, the AIAW disbanded after eleven years of promoting women's athletics. By 1989 the women's tournament was popular enough to be included in CBS's billion-dollar television deal with the NCAA.

Parity

After more than a decade of college dominance, the presence of the UCLA Bruins in the 1980 NCAA championship game ironically represented not a return to dynastic rule, but the emergence of team parity. These were not the Bruins of Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, but a scrappy group of youngsters unranked when the regular season ended and seeded eighth in the West Regional when the tournament began. Although the Bruins lost to the Louisville Cardinals and their all-American guard Darrell Griffith in the championship game 59-54, their 77-71 victory over number-one-ranked DePaul in the second round gave credence to an age-old dictum, "on any given night a lesser team can upset a great one." Indeed, the NCAA Tournament throughout the decade was characterized by unfulfilled expectations and underdog champions. In 1981 DePaul, ranked number one in the final regular season poll, as well as highly regarded Oregon State and Arizona State, all lost their opening game in the tournament, and Indiana, with nine losses on the season, won the title. North Carolina State, relying on coach Jim Valvano's shrewd and opportunistic game plan and the long-range bombing of guards Dereck Whittenburg and Sidney Lowe, made an improbable and dramatic run through the tournament field in 1983, beating a Houston team with future pro stars Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon on a buzzer-beating dunk by sophomore Lorenzo Charles. Villanova stunned Big East rival Georgetown in the 1985 final, and Kansas upset conference foe Oklahoma in 1988: in both cases the eventual champions entered the tournament with ten or more losses, and both avenged two of those losses in the final. While there were certainly great teams and dominant players throughout the decade, the period from 1982 to 1991 saw ten different schools win titles, and only two teams (Louisville and Indiana) were able to win twice during the 1980s. Every year the early rounds of the NCAA tournament were marked by improbable upsets, and the new atmosphere of parity allowed underdogs such as Cleveland State, Ar-kansas-Little Rock, and Siena to enjoy an unexpected moment in the sun.

Sampson

If the Johnson-Bird duel in March 1979 heralded the return of majesty to college basketball, the heir to the decade's newly vacated throne was a sinewy 7-feet 4-inch, 207-pound freshman named Ralph Sampson. Virginia's head coach, Terry Holland, who won the recruiting sweepstakes when he signed Sampson, said of his new center, "He has a chance to be the best who ever played," and opposing coaches quickly compared the towering Sampson to a young Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). Blessed with grace and agility that belied his seeming gawkiness, Sampson quickly displayed an array of offensive moves under the basket and showed a deft shooting touch when pushed away from it. At the defensive end of the court Sampson's eighty-eight-inch arm span seemed to swallow up anyone who dared to venture into the lane. As a freshman Sampson led the Cavaliers to the 1980 NIT championship and was named the tourney's MVP. Resisting pressures to turn professional after his initial college campaign (the Celtics' Red Auerbach was said to be enamored with Sampson's breathtaking potential), he appeared to come of age early in his sophomore season, pouring in 40 points against Ohio State before a national television audience. Over the next three seasons the Virginia center dominated the college game, winning the national Player of the Year award at the end of each season (1981-1983), thereby joining the select company of Oscar Robertson and Bill Walton as three-time honorees. In 1981 Virginia earned a trip to the Final Four, but Sampson struggled offensively throughout the tournament and the Cavaliers lost to North Carolina in the national semifinals. In both 1982 and 1983 Virginia entered the NCAA tournament as a top seed, only to lose to teams on a hot streak (Alabama-Birmingham and North Carolina State). While his critics pointed to Sampson's inability tolead his school to prominence consistently, pro scouts were won over by his size and offensive repertoire, and the Houston Rockets selected him as the first pick overall in the 1983 NBA draft.

Beast of the East

On 11 December 1982 Sampson's Virginia squad took on the Georgetown Hoyas, led by their intimidating sophomore center Patrick Ewing. The matchup in the middle was perhaps the most anticipated confrontation since UCLA's Alcindor and Houston's Elvin Hayes locked horns in the Astrodome in 1968. While Sampson outbattled his younger counterpart and Virginia won 68-63, the game reconfirmed the emergence of Georgetown as a basketball power. The Hoyas had narrowly missed capturing an NCAA title the previous spring when North Carolina's own brilliant freshman, a teenager named Michael Jordan, buried a sixteen-foot jump shot with sixteen seconds left to secure the Tar Heels' 63-62 win, Coach Dean Smith's first championship. Relying on Ewing's presence in the paint, George-town coach John Thompson fashioned the closest thing to a basketball dynasty in the 1980s, reaching three championship games in Ewing's four years. Thompson's teams induced a different version of March Madness, a condition known as "Hoya Paranoia," which was said to afflict opponents who wilted in the face of Georgetown's intense and menacing defense. In one of their more devastating displays of suffocating the opposition, Ewing and company erased a seven-point halftime deficit in the 1984 national semifinal by limiting a potent Kentucky team to 9 percent shooting in the second half (3 for 33). Buoyed by key substitute Michael Graham, a bald, rugged freshman forward, the Hoyas then defeated Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Cougars 84-75 in the championship game. Ewing was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player despite scoring only eighteen points in the two Final Four games, a testament to his awesome defensive presence. The rise of Georgetown coincided with the emergence of the Big East Conference as a prominent basketball power, and forced a reconsideration of the "East is Least" tag that plagued East Coast basket-ball during the UCLA reign. This ascent culminated in the 1985 NCAA tournament in which three Big East members—Georgetown, St. John's, and Villanova—advanced to the Final Four.

'Nova

In the 1985 title game in Lexington, Kentucky, defending champion Georgetown, a team that drew comparisons with the great Indiana and UCLA teams of the 1970s, played their typically ferocious defense, forcing their opponent into seventeen turnovers, and shot an impressive 55 percent from the field. The trouble was that the Villanova Wildcats shot an incredible 79 percent and pulled the upset of the decade, 66-64. A eighth seed in their region when the tournament began, Rollie Massimino's squad responded to one formidable challenge after another, upending Michigan, Maryland, North Carolina, and Memphis State on their way to the finals. But Georgetown was, presumably, another matter altogether. Patrick Ewing was a senior, and the Hoyas, sporting a gaudy 35-2 record, seemed destined for history. In the semifinals the Hoyas routed conference rival St. John's, holding the Redmen's star forward Chris Mullin (the 1985 national Player of the Year) to a mere eight points; since they had beaten Villanova twice during their conference schedule, Georgetown was considered a heavy favorite to repeat as champions. But the senior-laden Wildcats displayed uncommon composure in the face of Georgetown's relentless pressure and coolly turned in what Paul Attner called "the greatest shooting exhibition in college history." They refused to unravel after three straight monstrous dunks by Ewing in the first half and led 29-28 at intermission. In the second half each offensive possession was an exercise in patience as Villanova controlled the pace of the game and calmly waited for high-percentage shots. The strategy worked: they only missed one shot in the entire second half and kept their lead by making their free throws once the Hoyas desperately turned to fouling in the game's final minutes. When it was over the Georgetown players stayed on the bench watching as Wildcat center Ed Pinckney pounded the floor in ecstasy and his teammates climbed up on the press tables to celebrate with fans. As the Villanova players walked to the podium to be honored, the Hoyas stood and applauded. The 1985 championship offered the best college basketball had to offer: an underdog who succeeded by virtue of savvy play and a disappointed champion willing to lose gracefully.

Propositions 48 and 42

On 14 January 1989, just as the Georgetown Hoyas and the Boston College Eagles were gathering to jump center, Georgetown coach John Thompson removed his signature white towel from his shoulder and draped it over the shoulder of assistant coach Mike Riley. Then he walked off the court in protest. At issue was Thompson's displeasure with the NCAA's new standards for academic eligibility, known as Propositions 48 and 42. Proposition 48 was passed at the NCAA's 1983 convention in San Diego: it stipulated that an incoming Division I freshman athlete had to attain a prescribed minimum score on one of the two national standardized tests, as well as graduate from high school with at least a C average, to be eligible to compete in his or her freshman year. Nonqualifiers would maintain their scholarships during that first year, and future athletic eligibility would then be conditioned upon satisfactory academic performance. The measures immediately inspired debate. Initially the strongest outcry against the proposition came from officials representing sixteen historically black colleges. They protested that black educators were not consulted during the drafting of the proposal and, had they been, they would have pointed out that a disproportionate number of black students perform poorly on standardized tests because the tests reflect cultural and racial biases. Penn State football coach Joe Paterno gave an impassioned speech in support of the proposal, arguing that big-time athletics had educationally "raped" athletes, and that those who opposed the mandate were underestimating the "pride and competitiveness" of black athletes. Despite the controversy, the NCAA membership began enforcing the provisions of Proposition 48 in 1986. Thompson's boycott was in response to Proposition 42, passed 11 January 1989 by the NCAA, a measure that eliminated the partial-qualifier loophole of Proposition 48. With the tougher rule, schools could tender athletic scholarships only to incoming freshmen who met all of Proposition 48's requirements. Nonqualifiers would either have to pay their own way or attend a junior college (where these academic requirements were not applicable). In the first few years under Proposition 48 roughly eighteen hundred football and basketball players lost a year of eligibility, 86 percent of whom were African American. Thompson and the Black Coaches Association insisted that Proposition 48's stipulations were not only susceptible to charges of racial bias but also put athletes from low-income backgrounds at a disadvantage.

THE ODDS ON THE DREAM

Throughout the United States in the 1980s millions of young men and women dreamed of becoming professional athletes. Inevitably, however, only a comparative few would have their fantasies come true. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFSHSA), the odds of a high-school athlete making it in professional football at the end of the 1980s were more than six thousand to one. Becoming a professional basketball player was even less likely, ten thousand to one. The NFSHSA went on to report that the odds against an African American high-school athlete becoming either a professional football or a basketball player exceeded five thousand to one. These and other statistics prompted sociologist Harry Edwards to note that young black men and women "have a better chance of getting hit by a meteorite in the next ten years than getting work as an athlete." Still, young and not-so-young people continue to dream of becoming star athletes if they work hard and receive a few breaks. "Because the few rags-to-riches athletes are made so visible, the social mobility theme is maintained," writes sociologist George Sage. "This reflects the opportunity structure of society in general—the success of a few reproduces the belief in social mobility among the many."

Sources:

Richard Lapchick, Five Minutes to Midnight: Race and Sport in the 1990s (New York: Madison Books, 1991);

George Sage, Power and Ideology in American Sport: A Critical Perspective (Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics Books, 1990).

Scandal

With money flooding the sport from large-scale television contracts (millions of which was funneled back into the athletic programs and conferences that performed well in the NCAA tournament) and academic restrictions limiting the pool of potential Division I athletes, the recruiting process took on added significance, and many schools were tempted into wooing the star athletes with something more than the promise of a college education. One might call the 1980s "the decade of probation," since many of college basketball's most tradition-rich programs violated NCAA rules and were penalized. Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA, Maryland, North Carolina State, Memphis State, Cincinnati, Minnesota, Au-burn, Wichita State, Bradley, San Francisco, and New Mexico all served probationary terms for recruiting violations and academic improprieties, and the sanctions against these prominent basketball powers belied the long-held notion that some schools were "untouchables." Cars, cash, imaginary summer "jobs," and relaxed academic standards were most often the lures in what was increasingly becoming a bidding war for basketball talent. The rise of college basketball as an enormous profit venture revealed its darker side in two prominent point-shaving scandals during the decade as well. On 16 February 1981 Sports Illustrated reported that a mobster named Henry Hill claimed he had fixed six Boston College basketball games during the 1978-1979 season, making an estimated $100,000 over an eleven-week period as a result of the arrangements. On 23 November 1981 Rich Kuhn, a former Boston College player who was said to have netted as much as $2,500 per game, and four others were convicted of conspiring to manipulate the scores of those games. Then, as the country prepared to enjoy the 1985 Final Four, a story broke concerning Tulane University and another point-shaving scheme. Four Tulane starters, including Metro Conference Player of the Year John "Hot Rod" Williams, and a key reserve were paid approximately $23,000 to ensure that Tulane not cover the point spread in a 2 February game against Southern Mississippi and not lose to Memphis State by more than the seven-point spread on 20 February. Continued investigations revealed that cocaine was often given to players as a goodwill gesture by the conspirators (former Tulane students) who masterminded the fix. Furthermore, it was discovered that Williams had been paid handsomely to attend Tulane after high school, that head coach Ned Fowler often gave him as much as $100 per week, and that academic improprieties had taken place to ensure the eligibility of players. Fowler's resignation, along with two assistant coaches, was followed by Tulane president Eamon Kelly's decision to disband the university's basketball program, an act Kelly characterized as "the only way I know to demonstrate unambiguously this academic community's intolerance of the violations and actions we have uncovered."

The Crudest Thing

The University of Maryland was one of many prominent basketball programs put on probation by the NCAA's ruling body during the 1980s. The story of how they got there begins with a tragic episode. Len Bias, the Terrapins' 6-foot-8-inch senior forward, was drafted by the Boston Celtics on 17 June 1986, the second player selected in the NBA lottery. The Celtics' general manager, Red Auerbach, claimed that Bias "was as happy as any player I ever signed," and Larry Bird was said to be so excited about Bias's arrival that the veteran promised to show up at rookie camp in the fall. Forty hours after his moment of triumph, Bias was dead of cardiorespiratory arrest precipitated by an overdose of cocaine. Bias, who roamed the court with an almost regal bearing, had never missed a college game due to injury, and yet in the end he let his body down, and his heart gave out. On being told of the young star's death, Bird said, "It's the crudest thing I've ever heard." The subsequent criminal and intercollegiate investigations uncovered widespread drug use among players, academic and financial improprieties, and a possible attempt to tamper with evidence. Both Maryland athletic director Dick Dull and head basketball coach Lefty Driesell resigned in October 1986. The situation at Maryland once again raised questions about the responsibilities that athletic departments owe to the athletes who generate substantial revenues for their universities as well as the difficulties faced by young men and women who are thrust into the limelight. Reflecting on the Bias story, sportswriter Thomas Boswell may have put it best, "Athletes not only have to cope with fame, wealth, and hero worship; they have to face the possibility that they are frauds. Our image-making apparatus seems to insist that scoring average and virtue be connected. …Those who exaggerate the importance and the virtue of athletes do them no favor."

Knight in Tarnished Armor

Only two men's college basketball coaches won more than one NCAA championship in the 1980s, and while Louisville's Denny Crum (who led his team to titles in 1980 and 1986) certainly established himself as one of the preeminent coaches in the game, it was Indiana's Bobby Knight who captured the country's imagination—and indignation. Knight seemed intent on matching his every success with some outrageous act. Widely regarded as one of the acutest basketball minds in the coaching ranks, Knight preached aggressive man-to-man defense and an intricate and highly disciplined offensive scheme. His teams were most successful when directed by skillful guards such as Quinn Buckner, Isiah Thomas, and Steve Alford, who anchored his three NCAA titlists in 1976, 1981, and 1987 respectively. (Knight himself was a substitute guard at Ohio State on the great Jerry Lucas-John Havlicek teams of the 1950s.) Knight was respected as a coach who ran a clean program in a period of scandal, and his players almost always graduated. Despite these accomplishments Knight's erratic behavior, explosive temper, and lack of judgment often overshadowed his coaching prowess. In 1979 he assaulted a police officer at the U.S. Pan American Games in Puerto Rico, where a six-month sentence remains pending after Knight was convicted in absentia. In 1981 he shoved a Louisiana State fan into a trash can after a tournament game. Then there was the infamous "chair incident" on 23 February 1985, when Knight flung a chair out onto the court to protest a technical foul that was called against him: the chair narrowly missed the Purdue player stepping to the foul line to shoot the technical. On another occasion he pulled his team off the court during an exhibition game against the Soviet national team because he did not agree with the referee's calls. At once shrewd and rash, loyal and abusive, resistant to change and wildly unpredictable, Knight stands out as one of the most complicated figures in the college game. Even his former players struggle to define their relationship with their coach. As Isiah Thomas put it, "You know, there were times when, if I had had a gun, I think I would have shot him. And there were other times when I wanted to put my arms around him, hug him, and tell him that I loved him."

Sources:

John Feinstein, A Season Inside: One Year in College Basketball (New York: Villard Books, 1988);

Feinstein, A Season on the Brink: A Year With Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers (New York: Macmillan, 1986);

Peter Golenbock, Personal Fouls (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989);

Jim Savage, The Encyclopedia of the NCAA Basketball Tournament (New York: Dell, 1990);

C. Fraser Smith, Lenny, Lefty, and the Chancellor: The Len Bias Tragedy and the Search for Reform in Big-time College Basketball (Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1992);

Alexander Wolff and Armen Keteyian, Raw Recruits: The High Stakes Game Colleges Play to Get Their Basketball Stars—and What it Costs to Win (New York: Pocket Books, 1990).

Basketball

Background

Basketball can make a true claim to being the only major sport that is an American invention. From high school to the professional level, basketball attracts a large following for live games as well as television coverage of events like the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) annual tournament and the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) playoffs. And it has also made American heroes out of its player and coach legends like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Sheryl Swoopes, and other great players.

At the heart of the game is the playing space and the equipment. The space is a rectangular, indoor court. The principal pieces of equipment are the two elevated baskets, one at each end (in the long direction) of the court, and the basketball itself. The ball is spherical in shape and is inflated. Basket-balls range in size from 28.5-30 in (72-76 cm) in circumference, and in weight from 18-22 oz (510-624 g). For players below the high school level, a smaller ball is used, but the ball in men's games measures 29.5-30 in (75-76 cm) in circumference, and a women's ball is 28.5-29 in (72-74 cm) in circumference. The covering of the ball is leather, rubber, composition, or synthetic, although leather covers only are dictated by rules for college play, unless the teams agree otherwise. Orange is the regulation color. At all levels of play, the home team provides the ball.

Inflation of the ball is based on the height of the ball's bounce. Inside the covering or casing, a rubber bladder holds air. The ball must be inflated to a pressure sufficient to make it rebound to a height (measured to the top of the ball) of 49-54 in (1.2-1.4 m) when it is dropped on a solid wooden floor from a starting height of 6 ft (1.80 m) measured from the bottom of the ball. The factory must test the balls, and the air pressure that makes the ball legal in keeping with the bounce test is stamped on the ball. During the intensity of high school and college tourneys and the professional playoffs, this inflated sphere commands considerable attention.

History

Basketball is one of few sports with a known date of birth. On December 1, 1891, in Springfield, Massachusetts, James Naismith hung two half-bushel peach baskets at the opposite ends of a gymnasium and out-lined 13 rules based on five principles to his students at the International Training School of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), which later became Springfield College. Naismith (1861-1939) was a physical education teacher who was seeking a team sport with limited physical contact but a lot of running, jumping, shooting, and the hand-eye coordination required in handling a ball. The peach baskets he hung as goals gave the sport the name of basketball. His students were excited about the game, and Christmas vacation gave them the chance to tell their friends and people at their local YMCAs about the game. The association leaders wrote to Naismith asking for copies of the rules, and they were published in the Triangle, the school newspaper, on January 15,1892.

Naismith's five basic principles center on the ball, which was described as "large, light, and handled with the hands." Players could not move the ball by running alone, and none of the players was restricted against handling the ball. The playing area was also open to all players, but there was to be no physical contact between players; the ball was the objective. To score, the ball had to be shot through a horizontal, elevated goal. The team with the most points at the end of an allotted time period wins.

Early in the history of basketball, the local YMCAs provided the gymnasiums, and membership in the organization grew rapidly. The size of the local gym dictated the number of players; smaller gyms used five players on a side, and the larger gyms allowed seven to nine. The team size became generally established as five in 1895, and, in 1897, this was made formal in the rules. The YMCA lost interest in supporting the game because 10-20 basketball players monopolized a gymnasium previously used by many more in a variety of activities. YMCA membership dropped, and basketball enthusiasts played in local halls. This led to the building of basketball gymnasiums at schools and colleges and also to the formation of professional leagues.

Although basketball was born in the United States, five of Naismith's original players were Canadians, and the game spread to Canada immediately. It was played in France by 1893; England in 1894; Australia, China, and India between 1895 and 1900; and Japan in 1900.

From 1891 through 1893, a soccer ball was used to play basketball. The first basketball was manufactured in 1894. It was 32 in (81 cm) in circumference, or about 4 in (10 cm) larger than a soccer ball. The dedicated basketball was made of laced leather and weighed less than 20 oz (567 g). The first molded ball that eliminated the need for laces was introduced in 1948; its construction and size of 30 in (76 cm) were ruled official in 1949.

The rule-setters came from several groups early in the 1900s. Colleges and universities established their rules committees in 1905, the YMCA and the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) created a set of rules jointly, state militia groups abided by a shared set of rules, and there were two professional sets of rules. A Joint Rules Committee for colleges, the AAU, and the YMCA was created in 1915, and, under the name the National Basketball Committee (NBC) made rules for amateur play until 1979. In that year, the National Federation of State High School Associations began governing the sport at the high school level, and the NCAA Rules Committee assumed rule-making responsibilities for junior colleges, colleges, and the Armed Forces, with a similar committee holding jurisdiction over women's basketball.

Until World War II, basketball became increasingly popular in the United States especially at the high school and college levels. After World War II, its popularity grew around the world. In the 1980s, interest in the game truly exploded because of television exposure. Broadcast of the NCAA Championship Games began in 1963, and, by the 1980s, cable television was carrying regular season college games and even high school championships in some states. Players like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) became nationally famous at the college level and carried their fans along in their professional basketball careers. The women's game changed radically in 1971 when separate rules for women were modified to more closely resemble the men's game. Television interest followed the women as well with broadcast of NCAA championship tourneys beginning in the early 1980s and the formation of the WNBA in 1997.

Internationally, Italy has probably become the leading basketball nation outside of the United States, with national, corporate, and professional teams. The Olympics boosts basketball internationally and has also spurred the women's game by recognizing it as an Olympic event in 1976. Again, television coverage of the Olympics has been exceptionally important in drawing attention to international teams.

The first professional men's basketball league in the United States was the National Basketball League (NBL), which debuted in 1898. Players were paid on a per-game basis, and this league and others were hurt by the poor quality of games and the ever-changing players on a team. After the Great Depression, a new NBL was organized in 1937, and the Basketball Association of America was organized in 1946. The two leagues came to agree that players had to be assigned to teams on a contract basis and that high standards had to govern the game; under these premises, the two joined to form the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1949. A rival American Basketball Association (ABA) was inaugurated in 1967 and challenged the NBA for college talent and market share for almost ten years. In 1976, this league disbanded, but four of its teams remained as NBA teams. Unification came just in time for major television support. Several women's professional leagues were attempted and failed, including the Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) and the Women's World Basketball Association, before the WNBA debuted in 1997 with the support of the NBA.

Raw Materials

The outside covering of a basketball is made of synthetic rubber, rubber, composition, or leather. The inside consists of a bladder (the balloon-like structure that holds air) and the carcass. The bladder is made of butyl rubber, and the carcass consists of treads of nylon or polyester. Preprinted decals are used to label the ball, or foil is used to imprint label information. Zinc and copper plates are used in a press to either affix the decals or imprint the foil.

Design

The actual configuration of most basket-balls is dictated by the rules or standards of the type of game in which the ball will be used. NBA, WNBA, and other professional leagues have specified dimensions for regulation balls, as described above, and even the imprinted information is specified. Amateur sports bodies have also developed rules and specifications, and there are specialized basketballs made for junior players (younger than high-school age), intermediate players (high-school age), and for indoor, outdoor, or combination play. Promotional basketballs that are much smaller in diameter are also made as souvenirs of many events such as the NCAA Championships.

Basketball designers are always trying to improve the product and build a better basketball. Inventor Marvin Palmquist created the "Hole-in-One" basketball to improve a player's grip; the ball has dimples, much like a golf ball, and can be easily palmed Michael Jordan-style by players with smaller-than-Jordan hands. Even the most skilled NBA star copes with sweaty palms, and this obstacle is addressed in another modification consisting of microscopic holes in the surface, which is made of absorbent polyurethane. This is the same material that forms the grip on a tennis racket, but it has been strengthened to withstand the abrasion of bouncing on a wooden basketball court. It absorbs moisture to keep the ball's hide less slippery.

Michael Jordan was born February 17, 1963. Accepting a basketball scholarship to the University of North Carolina, he became the second Tarheel freshman to start every game. Jordan was named Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Rookie of the Year and won the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship in 1982. He led the ACC in scoring and was named college player of the year in 1983 and 1984. Jordan left North Carolina after his junior year and was drafted by the Chicago Bulls as the third overall pick of the 1984 draft.

A broken foot sidelined Jordan for 64 games during the 1985-1986 season. He returned, scoring 49 points against the Boston Celtics in the first game of the playoffs and 63 in the second—an NBA record. During the 1986-1987 season Jordan became the first player since Wilt Chamberlain to score 3,000 points in a season. The Bulls won the 1991-1993 NBA titles. In 1994 Jordan joined the Chicago White Sox minor league baseball team, returning to the Bulls for the remaining 1994-1995 season. In the 1995-1996 season, the team finished 72-10, another NBA record. The Bulls went on to win their fourth NBA title in 1996, fifth in 1997, and sixth in 1998 where Jordan claimed his sixth NBA finals MVP award,

Jordan participated in the 1984 and 1982 Summer Olympics, earning gold medals for the United States. He was named 1985s Rookie of the Year, 1988s Defensive Player of the Year, NBA MVP five times, has a career record for the highest scoring average of 28.5 ppg, played in 11 All-Star games (starting in 10, missing one due to injury), and named All-Star MVP three times. Jordan retired January 13, 1999.

Still other inventors feel the size of the ball is a disadvantage to proper handling and have suggested increasing the circumference from 30 to 36 in (76 to 91.4 cm), resulting in an increase in diameter from 9.6 to 11.5 in (24.4 to 29.2 cm). The so-called Bigball still fits through a regulation hoop and has been used in training sessions by both college and NBA teams. The Bigball must be shot with a higher arc to fall through the hoop, and, after practicing with the larger basketball, the regulation ball seems easier to handle.

The Manufacturing Process

Forming the bladder

• 1 The making of a basketball begins with the interior bladder. Black butyl rubber in bulk form (and including recycled rubber) is melted in the hopper of a press that feeds it out in a continuous sheet that is 12 in (30.5 cm) wide and 0.5 in (1.3 cm) thick. A guillotine-like cutter cuts the long strip into sheets that are 18 in (45.7 cm) long, and they are stacked up. A hand-controlled machine selects the sheets one at a time and, using a punch press, punches a 1-in-diameter (2.54-cm-diameter) hole that will hold the air tube for inflating the bladder.
• 2 The sheets are carried on a sheet elevator or conveyor to an assembly line where the air tube is inserted by hand. A heated melding device bonds it to the sheet, which is folded into quarters. Another punch press stamps out a rounded edge and, at the same time, binds the edges to make the seams of the bladder. This bladder is not perfectly shaped.
• 3 The odd-shaped bladder is taken to a vulcanizing machine. Vulcanization is a process for heating rubber under pressure that improves its properties by making it more flexible, more durable, and stronger. In the vulcanizer, the bladder is inflated. Heating by vulcanization uniformly seals the rubber so it will hold air. Completed bladders are stored in a holding chamber for 24 hours. This quality control measure tests their ability to hold air; those that deflate are recycled.

Shaping the carcass

• 4 The bladders that withstand the 24-hour inflation test are conveyed from the holding chamber to the twining or winding department. They make this joumey suspended from a conveyor system by their air tubes. Machines loaded with spools of either polyester or nylon thread or string wrap multiple strands at a time around each bladder; this is the same process used to make the inside of a golf ball. The irregularly shaped bladders now begin to take on a better, more rounded shape as the precisely controlled threads build and shape the balls. The quality of the thread and the number of strands determine the cost and quality of the ball. The typical street-quality basketball has a carcass made of multiple wraps of three strands of polyester thread. The balls used by professional teams have carcasses constructed of nylon thread that is wrapped using four strands of thread. The same over-head conveyors continue carrying the carcass-encased bladders by their air tubes to the next step in the process where the carcasses and covers will meet.

Crafting the covers of the balls

• 5 Meanwhile, the exteriors or covers of the balls have been in production as the bladders and carcasses have taken shape. On 60-inch-long (152-cm-long) tables, colored rubber is unrolled from a continuous roll. The smooth rubber does not have pebbling (small bumps) that characterizes the surface of a finished basketball so that the outlines for the panels can be clearly marked on the rubber. A silk screen is moved along a series of metal markers that are guides marking the length of the rubber sheet needed for each ball. The silk screen operator moves the screen by hand and imprints the outlines of the six panels making up the ball. Only one color is used at a time, and, depending on the design, multiple silk screenings may be needed to color the six panels with all the colors on the ball.
• 6 A hand-operated punch press—equipped with specially designed and tooled dies—punches the rubber outlines to create six separate panels per ball. The same die has a hole that is punched in one of the six panels to make an opening for the air tube. The excess rubber surrounding the panels is lifted off the line and deposited in a bin for recycling.
• 7 The assembly worker picks up the six panels for a single ball in a specific order and carries them to the vulcanizer. The interior of the vulcanizer for this process is different from the one for the bladders. It is form-fitted to hold the six panels, to create the channels between the panels, and to add any embossed information. The assembler fits the panels individually into specified sections in the vulcanizer. A bladder/carcass is taken off the overhead conveyor, covered with a coating of glue, and placed inside the chamber of the vulcanizer that is lined with the cover panels. When the ball emerges from the vulcanizer, most of its surface is still smooth (there are no bumps, called pebbling), but the channels and any embossing are formed into the surface.
• 8 Decals and foil decoration and information (if any) are applied by hand with small heat presses after the smooth ball is retrieved from the vulcanizer. Each ball is carefully inspected for gaps between the panels. These can occur, but each gap is filled during this inspection with a small piece of rubber that is hand-cut to fit the gap. The ball then is fitted into another vulcanizer that unifies the finished surface, blending in any gap fillers, and is specially molded to form the surface pebbling. The vulcanized balls are stored again for 24 hours in a second test to make sure they hold air.

Synthetic laminated covers and leather covers

• 9 The covers for basketballs that are made of synthetic laminated rubber or leather are also made in panels that are die-cut like the rubber panels. The synthetic laminated panels are shaved or trimmed along the edges, fitted and glued together by hand, and laminated to the carcass to create channels. They are also embossed by a heating process and decals are added. Any glue traces around the edges are removed, and any imperfect panels are replaced in the final inspection of synthetic laminated covers. Leather covers are made of full-grain, genuine leather and are stitched with heavy-duty machines; instead of indented, formed channels, the stitching forms the channels in leather balls. They are printed by silk screening and foil stamping, and their inspection includes a review of the uniformity and color of the leather.

Final testing, inspecting, and packing

• 10 Balls that pass the second 24-hour air pressure test are "bounce tested" to meet the regulation for inflation pressure that results in each ball bouncing a prescribed height. Balls that pass the bounce test are numbered to show the production run, and the decals and other artwork are inspected and touched up by hand as needed. Each completed ball is inspected again. The inspector removes the production run tag, and the ball is deflated so it can be easily packed and shipped. Each flattened ball is packed in a polyethylene bag, and the bagged balls are boxed for bulk shipment to the distributor. The distributor also inspects the balls when they are received and is responsible for reinflating them to the correct pressure and packaging them in display boxes for sale. The display boxes may also be packed in bulk for distribution to retailers.

Byproducts/Waste

No byproducts result from the manufacture of basketballs, but most makers have a variety of lines and may also make balls for other sports. Waste is limited. Dies for cutting panels of rubber, synthetic laminate, and leather are carefully designed to space the panels closely and limit the material used. This is especially critical for leather because of the cost; some leather waste is inevitable, though, because leather is a natural material and has irregularities in color, thickness, and surface. All rubber materials can be recycled, and they represent the bulk of material used in making a basketball.

Quality Control

Throughout the manufacturing process, inspections occur regularly to make sure the finished basketball will hold air and to correct any surface variations. Machines like punch presses, dies, vulcanizers, and printing tools are carefully designed initially to maximize use of materials and to create perfect pieces. The assembly process includes many steps that are performed by hand, and the assemblers are trained to watch for imperfections and reject unsuitable products. Inspections and tests also include weight-control testing of the completed carcasses and the panels, regardless of material. Whenever the completed products are stored for any length of time, they are randomly inspected for appearance, size, inflation, and any wobble.

Some distributors have special tests for products bearing their name. For example, Rawlings Sporting Goods Company tests the basketballs they produce for the NCAA Tournament with a unique "Slam Machine" that simulates the workout a ball will get in four games in just five minutes. The machine works by propelling the ball down a chute between two wooden wheels that launch it at about 30 mph (48 kph) toward a backboard that is angled to direct the ball back to the chute. Rawlings also uses this machine to test new designs, materials, glues, and other changes.

The Future

Basketball sales have escalated dramatically with the sport's popularity. Figures from 1998 show that 3.6 million balls were sold in the United States alone for a total of about $60 million. Given the record number of television viewers for the 1999-2000 NBA Championships, many parents and children are likely to purchase basketballs to test their own slam-dunking skills. Participation in the sport and sale of basketballs shows no sign of slowing down.

Another aspect of the worldwide popularity of basketball is that it has sharpened collectors' enthusiasm for souvenir balls, autographed balls, and those from key moments of the great players' games. An example with a high price tag is the basketball Wilt Chamberlain used to score 100 points in a game; it was sold in the 1990s for $551,844.

Where to Learn More

Books

The Diagram Group. The Rule Book: The Authoritative, Up-to-Date, Illustrated Guide to the Regulations, History, and Object of All Major Sports. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983.

Jacobs, A. G., ed. Basketball Rules in Pictures. New York: Perigee Books, 1966.

Periodicals

Feldman, Jay. "A Hole New Ball Game." Sports Illustrated 18, no. 26 (December 26, 1994): 102.

Jaffe, Michael. "For Better Shooting, Think Big: A Team of Ohio Entrepreneurs Insists that Their Oversized Basketball Will Improve Your Touch." Sports Illustrated 74, no. 15 (April 22, 1991): 5.

Mooney, Loren. "Get a Grip." Sports Illustrated (November 30, 1998): 16.

Tooley, Jo Ann. "On a Roll." U.S. News & World Report 107, no. 8 (August 21, 1989): 66.

Other

Rawlings Sporting Goods Co., Inc. http://www.rawlings.com. (December 14, 2000).

—GillianS.Holmes

BASKETBALL

BASKETBALL. James Naismith, originally from Al-monte, Ontario, invented basketball at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891. The game was first played with peach baskets (hence the name) and a soccer ball and was intended to provide indoor exercise for football players. As a result, it was originally a rough sport. Although ten of Naismith's original thirteen rules remain, the game soon changed considerably, and the founder had little to do with its evolution.

The first intercollegiate game was played in Minnesota in 1895, with nine players to a side and a final score of nine to three. A year later, the first five-man teams played at the University of Chicago. Baskets were now constructed of twine nets but it was not until 1906 that the bottom of the nets were open. In 1897, the dribble was first used, field goals became two points, foul shots one point, and the first professional game was played. A year later, the first professional league was started, in the East, while in 1900, the first intercollegiate league began. In 1910, in order to limit rough play, it was agreed that four fouls would disqualify players, and glass backboards were used for the first time. Nonetheless, many rules still differed, depending upon where the games were played and whether professionals, collegians, or YMCA players were involved.

College basketball was played from Texas to Wisconsin and throughout the East through the 1920s, but most teams played only in their own regions, which prevented a national game or audience from developing. Professional basketball was played almost exclusively in the East before the 1920s, except when a team would "barnstorm" into the Midwest to play local teams, often after a league had folded. Before the 1930s very few games, either professional or amateur, were played in facilities suitable for basketball or with a perfectly round ball. Some were played in arenas with chicken wire separating the players from fans, thus the word "cagers," others with posts in the middle of the floor and often with balconies overhanging the corners, limiting the areas from which shots could be taken. Until the late 1930s, all players used the two-hand set shot, and scores remained low.

Basketball in the 1920s and 1930s became both more organized and more popular, although it still lagged far behind both baseball and college football. In the pros, five urban, ethnic teams excelled and played with almost no college graduates. They were the New York Original Celtics; the Cleveland Rosenblums, owned by Max Rosenblum; Eddie Gottlieb's Philadelphia SPHAs (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association); and two great black teams, the New York Renaissance Five and Abe Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters, which was actually from Chicago. While these teams had some notable players, no superstars, such as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, or Red Grange, emerged to capture the public's attention as they did in other sports of the period. The same was true in college basketball up until the late 1930s, with coaches dominating the game and its development. Walter "Doc" Meanwell at Wisconsin, Forrest "Phog" Allen at Kansas, Ward "Piggy" Lambert at Purdue, and Henry "Doc" Carlson at Pittsburgh all made significant contributions to the game's development: zone defenses, the weave, the passing game, and the fast break.

In the decade preceding World War II, five events changed college basketball and allowed it to become a major spectator sport. In 1929, the rules committee reversed a decision that would have outlawed dribbling and slowed the game considerably. Five years later, promoter Edward "Ned" Irish staged the first intersectional twin bill in Madison Square Garden in New York City and attracted more than 16,000 fans. He demonstrated the appeal of major college ball and made New York its center. In December 1936, Hank Luisetti of Stanford revealed the virtues of the one-handed shot to an amazed Garden audience and became the first major collegiate star. Soon thereafter, Luisetti scored an incredible fifty points against Duquesne, thus ending the East's devotion to the set shot and encouraging a more open game. In consecutive years the center jump was eliminated after free throws and then after field goals, thus speeding up the game and allowing for more scoring. In 1938, Irish created the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in the Garden to determine a national champion. Although postseason tournaments had occurred before, the NIT was the first with major colleges from different regions and proved to be a great financial success. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) created its own postseason tournament in 1939 but did not rival the NIT in prestige for some time.

The 1940s saw significant changes for college basketball. Players began using the jump shot after Kenny Sailors of Wyoming wowed the East with it in 1943. The behind-the-back dribble and pass also appeared, as did exceptional big men. Bob Kurland at Oklahoma A&M was almost seven feet tall and George Mikan at DePaul was six feet ten inches. While Kurland had perhaps the better college career and played in two Olympics, he chose not to play professional ball, whereas Mikan became the first dominant star in the pros. Their defensive play inspired the rule against goal tending (blocking a shot on its downward flight). Adolph Rupp, who played under Phog Allen, also coached the first of his many talented teams at Kentucky in that decade. However, in 1951, Rupp and six other coaches suffered through a point-shaving scandal that involved thirty-two players at seven colleges and seriously injured college basketball, particularly in New York, where four of the seven schools were located. While the game survived, the NCAA moved its tournament away from Madison Square Garden to different cities each year and the NIT's prestige began to decline.

Professional basketball remained a disorganized and stodgy sport up until the late 1940s, with barnstorming still central to the game and most players still using the set shot. In 1946, however, hockey owners, led by Maurice Podoloff, created the Basketball Association of America (BAA) in the East to fill their arenas, but few fans came, even after Joe Fulks of Philadelphia introduced the jump shot. The BAA's rival, the National Basketball League, had existed since the 1930s, had better players, like Mikan of the Minneapolis Lakers, Bob Davies of the Rochester Royals, and Dolph Shayes of the Syracuse Nationals, but operated in much worse facilities and did not do much better at attracting audiences. In 1948, Podoloff lured the Lakers, Royals, and two other teams to the BAA and proposed a merger of the two leagues for the 1949–1950 season. The result was the National Basketball Association (NBA), with Podoloff its first commissioner. The seventeen-team league struggled at first but soon reduced its size and gained stability, in large part because of Mikan's appeal and Podoloff's skills.

Despite the point-shaving scandal, college ball thrived in the 1950s, largely because it had prolific scorers and more great players than in any previous decade. Frank Selvy of Furman and Paul Arizin of Villanova both averaged over forty points early in the decade, while Clarence "Bevo" Francis of tiny Rio Grande College in Ohio amazed fans by scoring 116 points in one game while averaging 50 per game for a season. The decade also witnessed some of the most talented and complete players ever. Tom Gola at LaSalle, Bill Russell at San Francisco, Wilt Chamberlain at Kansas, Elgin Baylor at Seattle, Jerry West at West Virginia, and Oscar Robertson at Cincinnati, all had phenomenal skills that have since been the measure of other players. And in 1960 one of the best teams ever, Ohio State, won the NCAA title led by Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek.

Professional basketball underwent major changes in the 1950s that helped increase its popularity. In 1950, Earl Lloyd, from West Virginia, played for the Washington Capitols and became the first African American to play in the NBA. In 1954, Danny Biasone, owner of the Syracuse Nationals, persuaded the NBA to institute the twenty-four-second shot clock, requiring a team to shoot within that time. This eliminated the slow pace that had long prevailed in the pros and made the NBA more exciting. Teams now scored one hundred points a game regularly. The league also now awarded foul shots when the other team received more than five personal fouls a period, greatly reducing the rough play that had hurt the pro game. In 1956, Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics made the best deal in NBA history when he acquired the draft rights to Bill Russell, the defensive player and rebounder he needed to complement Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman in the backcourt.

With the addition of Russell, the Celtics became the best pro team ever, winning eleven of the next thirteen championship titles before expansion diluted the talent in the NBA. The St. Louis Hawks, with Bob Pettit, beat the Celtics in 1958, and the Philadelphia 76ers, with Chamberlain, beat them in 1967. But Russell, a player-coach for two titles, and his teammates formed the greatest dynasty in pro ball. Even the Los Angeles Lakers, who had moved from Minneapolis in 1960, with West and Baylor, were no match for the Celtics over these years. While West, Baylor, Chamberlain—who averaged over fifty points a game in 1962—and Oscar Robertson—who in the same year averaged a triple double per game in points, assists, and rebounds—were superior to any individual Celtic, no other team could consistently play defense, re-bound, and run with the Celtics.

College basketball also experienced tremendous growth and increasing racial diversity during the 1960s. While Russell, Chamberlain, Baylor, and Robertson were

proof of the integration of college ball in most of the country, many teams from the South would still not play against black players. That changed in the 1960s. In 1963, Loyola College of Chicago, on its way to the NCAA title with four black starters, beat Mississippi State, which had refused to play against a team with a black player the year before. Three years later, Texas Western, with five black starters, beat Adolph Rupp's heavily favored all-white Kentucky team for the NCAA title. Thereafter, black players began to dominate basketball, a trend that has since become steadily more pronounced. While pro and college basketball have hired more black coaches and executives than any other sport, their numbers do not begin to match black players' contribution to the game.

The 1960s and 1970s also witnessed the amazing success of John Wooden's UCLA Bruins. In twelve years from 1964 on, the Bruins won ten NCAA titles. While five titles resulted from the dominance of Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and then Bill Walton at center, Wooden won the other five with speed, a full court zone defense, and talented guards and forwards. Other coaches have also compiled excellent NCAA tournament records: Rupp at Kentucky; Dean Smith, another Phog Allen protégé, at North Carolina; Bobby Knight at Indiana; Denny Crum at Louisville; and Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. But Wooden and his Bruins remain unique. They also helped create the excitement that now surrounds the NCAA finals.

With the end of the Celtic dynasty, the NBA fell on relatively hard times in the 1970s. There were great play-ers, of course, like Alcindor with the Milwaukee Bucks, Walton with the Portland Trailblazers, Elvin Hayes with the Washington Bullets, Dave Cowens with the Celtics, Rick Barry with the Golden State Warriors, Willis Reed with the New York Knicks, and West and Chamberlain with the Lakers. But no new transcendent stars emerged. In addition, a number of players with drug problems hurt the league's image. Many felt that the rival American Basketball Association—which started in 1968 and had stars like Connie Hawkins, George Gervin, and the amazing Julius Irving—played a more exciting game. The ABA used a red, white, and blue-colored ball, allowed the three-point shot, and had a helter-skelter style. However, it folded in 1976, after which four of its teams joined the NBA.

College basketball, as usual, provided exciting players to revitalize the pros. In the late 1970s, Larry Bird, a marvelous shooter, passer, and rebounder, starred for Indiana State. In 1979, he played and lost in the NCAA finals to another superb player, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, a six foot nine inch guard for Michigan State. The next year, Johnson went to the Lakers and Bird to the Celtics, where they, with talented teammates, created a rivalry that reinvigorated pro basketball. Of equal importance was David Stern, who became commissioner in 1984. He facilitated a compromise between labor and management and helped the NBA become a global success.

Women's basketball also attracted a larger audience beginning in the 1970s with Anne Meyers of UCLA and Nancy Lieberman of Old Dominion as the first big stars. In the early 1980s, Cheryl Miller at USC and Lynette Woodard at Kansas, the first black stars, along with Carol Blazejowski at Montclair State, demonstrated the scoring and athleticism previously associated with men's ball. In 1982, the first NCAA women's tournament was held as the sport grew in popularity. In 1996, the American Basketball League began and the next year the WNBA, sponsored by the NBA, started. In late 1998, the ABL folded with some teams becoming part of the WNBA. The Houston Comets, with its superstar Cynthia Cooper, dominated the league.

College basketball has been very competitive and hugely successful since the Wooden era. Eighteen different teams won the NCAA tournament from 1976 to 2002, although most have been from the major conferences. Since then, the dunk, banned in 1968 to limit Alcindor, has been restored; the shot clock was introduced along with the three-point field goal; first-year students became eligible to play; and recruiting became more competitive among the big conferences. As with the pros, television has made college basketball available on many channels, all season long, with more money involved every year. Many fine teams have arisen: North Carolina, Kansas, Indiana, Georgetown, Duke, Louisville, Michigan, Kentucky, and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Increasingly, however, stars have turned pro after one or two years of eligibility and many high school standouts have begun forgoing college altogether. While this has precluded dynasties from developing, it has hurt continuity, hurt the quality of play, and may discourage enthusiasm for the college game.

The pro game enjoyed tremendous success up through the 1990s, thanks to players like Jabbar, Bird, Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Reggie Miller, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, and Hakeem Olajuwon—and, of course, the magnificent Michael Jordan. Jordan turned pro in 1984, leaving North Carolina early, and became an incredible scorer and a superlative defender for the Chicago Bulls, though it was not until 1991, with Scottie Pippen and Coach Phil Jackson, that the Bulls won a title. They then won five more titles in seven years to rank them near the Celtics. In the process, Jordan became the planet's most famous athlete and the NBA became a marketing phenomenon. Jordan retired in 1998, then returned in 2001, saying he had an "itch that needed to be scratched." Nonetheless, his playing seemed to have lost much of its luster, and despite the emergence of new stars, like Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter, Grant Hill, Allen Iverson, and Shaquille O'Neal, it remained unclear how popular the NBA will be in the years to come.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Axthelm, Pete. The City Game: Basketball from the Garden to the Play grounds. New York: Harpers Magazine Press, 1970.

Bjarkman, Peter C. The History of the NBA. New York: Crescent Books, 1992.

———. Hoopla: A Century of College Basketball, 1896–1996. Indianapolis: Masters Press, 1996.

———. The Biographical History of Basketball. Lincolnwood, Ill.: Masters Press, 2000.

George, Nelson. Elevating the Game: The History and Aesthetics of Black Men in Basketball. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.

Gutman, Bill. The History of NCAA Basketball. New York: Crescent Books, 1993.

Ham, Eldon L. The Playmasters: From Sellouts to Lockouts—An Unauthorized History of the NBA. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2000.

Isaacs, Neil D. Vintage NBA—The Pioneer Era, 1946–1956. Indianapolis: Masters Press, 1996.

Peterson, Robert W. Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Sachare, Alex. One Hundred Greatest Basketball Players of All Time. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

JohnSyrett

See alsoCollege Athletics ; Sports .

Basketball

Replay

As in previous eras in college basketball, many of the same teams stood at the forefront of the sport in the 1990s. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships were won by the all-time victory leader, Kentucky (1996 and 1998), as well as numbers two and four on the list, North Carolina (1993) and Duke (1991 and 1992). Only Kansas, third in all-time victories, did not win a championship, although they were runner-up in 1991. The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), a national power in the 1960s under John Wooden, returned to championship form with an undefeated romp through March Madness in 1995. In 1990 the University of Nevada at Los Vegas (UNLV), with the third-best winning percentage (.726) in NCAA history, behind Kentucky (.765) and North Carolina (.740), finally won a national crown. The universities of Arkansas (1994), Arizona (1997), and Connecticut (1999) won the other three Division I-A championships of the decade.

Women

The women's college basketball champion-ships were almost equally predictable. Tennessee (with the highest all-time wins) took four titles (1991, 1996, 1997, and 1998; runner-up in 1995). Stanford won twice (1990 and 1992). Other NCAA Division I-A champions included Texas Tech (1993), North Carolina (1994), Connecticut (1995), and Purdue (1999). The University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers were dominant, winning every game in their 1997-1998 season and scoring an average 30.1 points more than their opponents, seventeen of which were top twenty-five teams. Most observers agreed they were the best women's college basketball team ever.

Domination?

In NCAA I-A men's basketball, to say there was repetition of champions is not to say there was dominance by any team, league, or player. Duke had a down period following the surgery and recovery of Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who missed most of the 1994-1995 season with a back injury and stress-related exhaustion. Kentucky won its two championships under different coaches, Rick Pitino (who left to coach the Boston Celtics) and Tubby Smith, the first African American head basketball coach in the history of the college. Dean Smith, of North Carolina, surprised everyone by retiring after the 1997 season as the all-time winningest Division I-A coach with 879 victories, leaving his program in the hands of his assistant, Bill Guthridge. As for league play, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Southeastern Conference (SEC), PAC 10, Big 10, and Big East could all make a case for their supremacy, but none made an unequivocal, indisputable statement for that designation. As for the player of the decade, Tim Duncan of Wake Forest could make as good a claim as anyone because he played a full four years with excellence, and was the best rebounder in the country in 1997 with 14.7 per game. He was awarded the Rupp Trophy and the Wooden and Naismith Awards and selected the Player of the Year; he was the first player taken in the 1997 National Basketball League (NBA) draft. In a new trend, many college players contributed to their team for a year or two and then declared themselves eligible for professional ball. Early departures from the college ranks included Shaquille O'Neal from Louisiana State University, Jason Kidd from the University of California at Berkeley, Allen Iverson from Georgetown University, Ron Mercer from Kentucky, Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison from North Carolina, Elton Brand from Duke, and dozens of others, many of whom never made it in the NBA.

Innovation

No innovations at the college level during the 1990s compared with the three radical changes introduced during the 1980s: a sixty-four-team field for the playoffs (1985), a shot clock to speed up the game (1986), and a three-point shot from the perimeter to increase out-side scoring (1987). Instead, the most obvious alteration of the college game was that the NBA began to sign athletes right out of high school, thus allowing players who had little or no interest in academics to skip college basketball. Seven high school players entered the NBA, bypassing college, in the almost five decades from 1946 to 1994. In less than a half decade, from 1995 through 1998, another seven players made the high school-to-NBA leap. In addition to the dozens of early defections to the NBA and European teams, college basketball became less of a minor league system for the pros than it had been.

Popularity

Three of the top ten highest-rated televised college games were played during the decade, although all were in the first half of the decade, seeming to indicate a plateau in the popularity of the college game. The third highest-rated game was Duke versus Michigan on 6 April 1992; the fifth was North Carolina versus Michigan on 5 April 1993; and the sixth was Arkansas versus Duke on 4 April 1994. Any sense that college basketball was declining in popularity, however, was belied by the $6 billion price tag paid for the television rights to broadcast the end of season championship tournament, known as March Madness.

Bull Market

On the professional level, Michael Jordan was possibly the best athlete in the history of basketball. Other players did not necessarily look bad in comparison to him, but they certainly fell under his enormous shadow. Opponents could occasionally block his shots, or, in a given game, score more points, but the 1990s was his decade. Even during the labor dispute of 1998-1999, the first work stoppage in the history of the NBA, Billy Hunter, executive director of the players association, needed Jordan's considerable influence on their side to insure a favorable outcome for his constituency. Everyone understood that the game would not be the same when Jordan retired. It took no great marketing savvy to discern the significant difference in television ratings when Jordan and the Chicago Bulls were playing and when they were not. Jordan graciously delayed the announcement of his second retirement until the contract negotiations were concluded. The Bulls, largely because of Jordan, were the dominant team of the decade, even leading the league in merchandise sales. Other great players were a part of the mix at various times, including Horace Grant, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman. They also had an impressive coach in Phil Jackson. How these talented men might have succeeded without Jordan will never be known. For example, Jackson won six titles as Jordan's coach and none without him during the decade.

Other Stars

Jordan was not, however, the only story in the NBA. Other great players were a part of professional basketball, some of them of "all-century" caliber. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird ended their illustrious careers early, and Duncan began his career near the end of the decade. Charles Barkley, John Stockton, O'Neal, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and Karl Malone all played magnificently. These players helped formed two Dream Teams to represent the United States during the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, and they crushed their opponents to win two gold medals. The league seemed to become more competitive in Jordan's absence, as other "franchise" players had the opportunity to face off. Olajuwon, playing for the Houston Rockets, teamed with his former college teammate, Clyde Drexler, to defeat Stockton, Malone, and the Utah Jazz. Phoenix featured Barkley, while the San Antonio Spurs had league MVP Robinson. Orlando showcased the play of their star center, O'Neal. Even with such talented players, professional basketball was usually a delight to behold when Jordan was on the court. In addition to the grace with which he played the game, he had the charisma to keep the public fascinated and tuned in. Yet, none of the championship series in which the Bulls participated were blowouts. They always seemed vulnerable; there were enough subplots to keep the contests interesting and to make Jordan's heroics that much more amazing. In the 1996 finals against the Utah Jazz, Jordan faced Malone, who had won the MVP award that season. People wondered if the Malone/Stockton duo, after eleven years together, were good enough to overcome the Jordan/Pippen express. In the series Jordan averaged thirty-two points per game, hitting the buzzer-beater in the first game, scoring thirty-eight points in the fifth game despite being ill, scoring another thirty-nine points in the sixth and final game, and garnering MVP honors for the series. It took all of Jordan's magic to overcome the bad feelings of fans toward professional basketball on other fronts. Latrell Sprewell's choking of his Golden State Warriors coach P. J. Carlesimo on 1 December 1997, and his threats to kill Carlesimo, came across to the fans as typical of spoiled, rich athletes with whom spectators had little in common. It was impossible to retain the illusion that NBA stars were average men who had managed to succeed with hard work and talent. Clearly, such athletes were far from average. When a dispute between management and players threatened to halt play, it became hard for fans to contemplate paying $400 to attend a game while billionaire owners and millionaire athletes demanded a greater share of the spoils.

Women's Professional Basketball

Two women's professional basketball leagues were started during the decade, only one of which survived to the year 2000. The American Basketball League lasted from 1996 to 1998. The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) had sounder financial underpinnings, being sponsored by the NBA. It began in 1997 as a summer league, with eight teams, not in direct competition with the traditional basketball season. By 2000 the league had sixteen teams, double the original eight. The Houston Comets won all three league championships; Houston's Cynthia Cooper took two league MVP awards; Houston's Van Chancellor won Coach of the Year all three years. Attendance looked promising, and several female stars shined, including Cooper, Jennifer Azzi, Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, and Sheryl Swoopes.

Sources:

CBS.sportsIine.com, Internet website.

NBA.com, Internet website.

Sports Illustrated 1999 Sports Almanac (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998). WNBA.com, Internet website.

BASKETBALL: THE COLLEGE TEAMS

A Live-Action Game

Neil D. Isaac, author of Ali the Moves (1975), a history of college basketball, argues that basketball is the most popular sport in the United States, but that it is more successful as a live-action spectator sport and as a participation sport than on television. While baseball fans might question that claim, there is an undeniable attraction to basketball, particularly at the college level. The continuous action and high scoring of the game make it exciting to watch, even if it does not televise well. The roughly one thousand college basket-ball teams in the United States attracted fifteen million fans in 1960.

A National Audience

College basketball became a national game at the major-college level in the 1960s. Before that time college coaches recruited locally and promoted what might be called regional game styles. But television and the rise in fan interest affected basketball as it did other major sports. The game became faster and the players bigger as a system of high-school feeder teams was developed. Coaches traveled throughout the country searching for fast, big boys they could mold into team players. The game attracted the attention of gamblers too. In 1951 there was a cheating scandal, involving players from seven schools, that had shocked naive fans. In 1961 there was another, bigger scandal that uncovered undeniable evidence of point shaving at twenty-two colleges affecting forty-four games. In fact, New York district attorney Frank Hogan, who announced the scandal, claimed the cheating involved more schools. Some of the best college teams in the East and the South were implicated: NYU, Columbia, Saint Johns, North Carolina State, Mississippi State, and Tennessee, and it was suggested that gambling interests had infected teams throughout the nation. But the 1961 cheating scandal caused little more than a brief show of righteous outrage among fans and sports administrators. By 1962 it was business as usual.

Integration

The most dramatic change to basketball at the college level resulted from the integration of the game. Black players with remarkable skills took the game to a new level of athleticism. Sportswriters began making a distinction between white basketball and black basket-ball: black basketball was fast and flashy, and players who could not jump had better stay home. When Adolph Rupp, the masterful but unquestionably racist coach of the segregated University of Kentucky team, was asked why black players were so fast, he replied that the lions and tigers caught all the slow ones. Celtic great Bob Cousy said, "when coaches get together, one is sure to say, Tve got the one black kid in the country who can't jump.' When coaches see a white boy who can jump or who moves with extraordinary quickness, they say, 'He should have been born black, he's that good.' "Oscar Robertson of the University of Cincinnati epitomized black basketball in the early 1960s. He had superior dribbling skills; his elusive drives to the basket frustrated bigger and slower defenders; as a sophomore in 1958 he won the national scoring title, an accomplishment no other sophomore had achieved. He won the scoring title again as a junior and as a senior, scoring more points in his career than any player ever had.

The Stubborn SEC

Some southern coaches insisted on what they referred to as the purity of the game—that meant segregation. In 1959 Mississippi State won the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and had a 24-1 record on the season, but the team refused to participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament because they would be required to play teams that included blacks. Auburn, 12-2 in the SEC in 1960, deferred their NCAA invitation to runner-up Georgia Tech. In 1961 and 1962 Mississippi State players and students decided they should compete against teams with black players, but the board of regents forbade it. Finally, in 1963 the team was allowed to compete in the national championships but feared reprisal from hometown racists.

White Vincibility

The 1966 NCAA championship was a basketball-court battle to decide the viability of all-white teams. Adolph Rupp, age sixty-four, had won four national championships as coach of Kentucky, and he had never allowed a black player on his team. In 1966 the Kentucky Wildcats were undefeated going into the NCAA final, and Rupp had nothing but praise for his boys: "They are regular to the last man. It would be mean if they lost," he said. In the championship game Kentucky met Texas Western University, a small independent school that had never been in contention for a national title in any sport; they were black, they were young (starting three sophomores), and they played what was called black basketball. In the championship they humiliated Kentucky. The smallest man on the court, Bobby Joe Hill, stole the ball twice from Kentucky and drove the length of the floor to score. Texas Western led in scoring most of the game and was up by eleven points with three minutes to play. The final score was 72-65, and it marked the death of all-white basketball. In 1969 Rupp recruited a black, and then he retired.

CONNIE HAWKINS

In 1961 Connie Hawkins was a freshman at the University of Iowa when the cheating scandal broke. Hawkins had never played in a professional game, but he was accused of having served as an intermediary between gamblers and players and so was stripped of his scholarship by Iowa and black-listed by the NBA for eight years. In high school Hawkins already had a national reputation as one of the nation's best basketball players. He was 6 feet 7 inches tall and reputedly could beat NBA starters in one-on-one games by the time he was a high-school senior. He was recruited by over 250 colleges despite having an IQ_of 65 on standardized tests. He went to Iowa because they offered him the best deal: a full scholarship and $150 a month.

When the cheating scandal broke, Hawkins testified freely before relentless questioning. One investigator remarked that he believed Hawkins because he was too stupid to lie. Hawkins confessed, under duress he later claimed, and his career was threatened. After being blackballed by the NBA, he was a star player for the Pittsburgh Pipers of the American Basketball League, the predecessor of the American Basketball Association. In 1968, the first year of the ABA, he led the Pipers to the league championship, led the team in scoring, and was named most valuable player. In 1969 Hawkins won a lawsuit against the NBA for the right to play. He won and was signed by Phoenix.

Source:

Randy Roberts and James S. Olson, Winning is the Only Thing: Sports in America Since 1945 (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

UCLA

In the last years of the decade college basket-ball was dominated by UCLA. Coach John Wooden's name seemed to describe his character. He was humorless on the court and seemed to live by aphorisms. He was able to enforce military-style discipline, and he studied the game of basketball with a scholar's dedication. He also recruited, from three thousand miles away in Manhattan, the most dominating college basketball player ever to play the game to that time: Lew Alcindor. Alcindor (who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) was seven feet tall when he came to UCLA, and Wooden showed him how to capitalize on his height without depending on it.

Ten Championships in Twelve Years

UCLA was good before Alcindor. They had won the national championship in 1964 and 1965 with superbly coached, well-balanced teams that emphasized defense. Led by the shooting of left-hander Gail Goodrich and the quickness of Walt Hazzard that year, UCLA seemed to win because they worked harder than other teams. In 1965 Goodrich continued the tradition by leading a team that seemed to approach the game as if it were an academic subject, beating opponents because they seemed to know more. In 1967 Wooden had Alcindor. Now he had the advantage of superior coaching and the most imposing player in the game, UCLA won the national championship with a team on which five of the first six players were sophomores. They went on to win the next six national titles, for a record ten championships between 1964 and 1975.

Sources:

Neil D. Isaacs, All the Moves: A History of College Basketball (Philadelphia & New York: Lippincott, 1975);

Joe Jares, Basketball: The American Game (Chicago: Foilett, 1971);

John D. McCallum, College Basketball, U.S.A. Since 1892 (New York: Stein & Day, 1978).

BASKETBALL

A New Game

In the fall of 1891 Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick, the director of physical education at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, asked one of his instructors, James Naismith, to develop a new indoor game to replace the gymnastics and calisthenics routinely practiced during the winter months. After studying the attributes of lacrosse, football, rugby, and soccer, Naismith created a game in which players would bounce and pass a soccer ball from one teammate to another and score points by tossing the ball into a suspended goal. The concept for the game came to him from watching rugby players spending the winter months throwing rugby balls into boxes. Since he did not have boxes to use for goals, he obtained two peach baskets and hung them from the railing around the YMCA gymnasium, ten feet above the floor. In December 1891 Naismith developed thirteen rules for the new game, which received an unenthusiastic response from his students, who had tired of their instructor's experimentation with new games that fall. "I asked the boys to try it once as a favor to me," Naismith recalled. "They started, and after the ball was first thrown up there was no need for further coaxing." Although some students wanted to name the new game "Naismith Ball," their modest instructor settled on a simpler suggestion: "basketball."

From the YMCA to the AAU

Basketball quickly spread throughout the YMCAs of New England and the Northeast. The organization used the game as a promotional tool to increase membership, as an intramural recreational activity, and as a competitive extramural game. Competition between YMCAs became so intense that it threatened the mission of the organization to promote spiritual growth. The YMCAs attempted to regulate basketball through the establishment of separate basketball leagues, but the organizations were soon undermined by professionalism, which, according to YMCA director Gulick, "resulted in men of lower character going into the game, for men of serious purpose in life do not care to go into that kind of thing." In 1896 the YMCA turned to the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) for help in regulating the extramural basketball leagues and, especially, curbing the tendency toward professionalism. The AAU gained control of basketball by exercising editorial control over its official rules, which had been published by the A.G. Spalding and Brothers Company in 1894, and by establishing uniform play according to those rules through the establishment of leagues and sponsorship of regional and national championships. To be eligible for regional and national championships, basketball teams had to register with the AAU, whose leagues and championship play emerged first in New York in 1898 and then spread to other cities across the nation. New York hosted the first AAU national basketball championship in 1908, while Chicago staged the second in 1909.

College

Colleges and universities throughout the Midwest and Northeast quickly embraced basketball, establishing teams, leagues, and rules. On 9 February 1895 the Minnesota School of Agriculture and Mining defeated Hamline College, 9-3, in the first intercollegiate game. This game, however, was played with nine-man teams. A month later, the first game played between five-man teams resulted in the University of Chicago defeating the University of Iowa YMCA, 15-12. Teams in the Northeast took the lead in the development of intercollegiate basketball leagues in the 1900s, with the establishment of the Eastern League, composed of Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and Princeton. The formation of the Eastern League especially drew criticism from the AAU, because the conduct of Yale and Harvard bordered on professionalism, as the schools benefited from gate receipts and paid coaches. Despite threats from the AAU to ban the University of Pennsylvania from amateur play, Penn joined the Eastern League in 1905. In opposition to the AAU, that same year the Eastern League and the University of Chicago of the Western League drew up a separate set of college basketball rules, the Official Collegiate Guide. In 1908 Chicago defeated Penn in a two-game national championship series, which the Spalding Guide described as showing "crowds in Philadelphia and Chicago what a good, wholesome, sportsmanlike game basketball is." In 1909 the basketball rules committee of the Eastern and Western Leagues joined the National Collegiate Athletic Association, an organization formed in 1905 to reform college football, to standardize college basketball rules and distinguish them from those of the AAU.

RISE OF WOMEN'S BASKETBALL

During the 1900s basketball became the most pervasive sport for women in American colleges and universities. In 1892, soon after James Naismith created basketball at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, Senda Berenson as director of physical training introduced the game to the women of Smith College in nearby Northampton, Massachusetts. Although acknowledging basketball as the one game that had "helped to develop the athletic spirit in women more than any other," she thought that the game played under Naismith's rules was too rough for women. Berenson, whose concept of female physical activity was in sharp contrast to Victorian notions of restraint, still preferred a more orderly game. She formulated rules that prohibited snatching the ball away from opponents, holding the ball more than three seconds, or dribbling it more than three times. To prevent overexertion and the domination of skilled players, Berenson divided the court into three sections and assigned players to each section. In 1899 she and representatives of Radcliffe, Oberlin, and the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics formed the Women's Basketball Rules Committee, which codified women's basketball rules and had them published by the A.G. Spalding Company. Although Smith defeated Bryn Mawr, 4-3, in the first intercollegiate women's basketball game in 1901, Berenson stressed intramural over intercollegiate games because they facilitated greater student participation in physical training and stressed the social and cooperative rather than the competitive aspects of sports. Women's basketball continued to be played under her rules until the 1960s with minimal modifications.

Source:

Ronald A. Smith, "The Rise of Basketball for Women in Colleges," Canadian Journal of History of Sport and Physical Education, 1 (December 1970): 18-36.

Professional Basketball

Professional basketball began in the late 1890s, as independent teams, particularly in Philadelphia, resisted the control of the AAU. After gaining control of amateur basketball in 1896, the AAU attempted to standardize the game, eliminate rough play, and require teams to pay registration fees to the organization. Philadelphia teams, which played a rough style of basketball, objected to paying registration fees to the AAU and formed a rival organization, the Eastern Amateur Basketball Association (EABA) in 1898, to accomplish the goals of the AAU without the registration fees. The real reason for the EABA, however, was to promote professionalism, as managers and players feared the AAU would follow through on its threat to disrupt their money-making schemes. In 1899 the EABA became the National League of Professional Basketball (NLPB), with its primary function to make sure that owners and players would honor team contracts. Before the establishment of the NLPB, owners would raid teams for the best players, and players would jump teams for better pay. After the 1903 season, the NLPB folded because it could not control these abuses. From 1903 to 1909 the American League, established by Reach Guide editor William J. Scheffers, governed professional basketball. Professional teams in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio formed the Central League in 1906. In the 1900s, however, professional basketball languished behind other sports in its appeal to masses of spectators.

Sources:

Albert G. Applin II, "From Muscular Christianity to the Market Place: The History of Men's and Boys' Basketball in the United States, 1891-1957," dissertation, University of Massachusetts, 1982;

Neil D. Issacs, All the Moves: A History of College Basketball (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

BASKETBALL

Early Days

Basketball, the creation of Dr. James Naismith, is the only major sport that originated solely in the United States. Two peach baskets fastened to a gymnasium balcony in the winter of 1891 provided its humble beginnings and suggested the sport's name. The Spring-field Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) arbitrated the rules for the game's first two years. The YMCA then joined with the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to govern the game. In 1908 the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) assumed charge of the college rules, and in 1915 the YMCA, the NCAA, and the AAU formed a joint committee.

College Basketball

While small gyms limited crowd size, the potential for basketball as an intercollegiate sport was becoming apparent by the turn of the century. Since existing facilities could be modified to accommodate the sport and since a few good players could make a team competitive, small colleges found that basketball allowed them to take on larger schools and also discovered that the game could gain attention for their institutions. Conference play between colleges began as early as 1902 in the Eastern League; the Western Conference followed in 1906, the Missouri Valley in 1908, the Southwest in 1915, and the Pacific Coast in 1916. Early powers outside of the East included Wabash College in Indiana, which was 66-3 from 1908 to 1911, as well as Wisconsin, which under coach Walter Meanwell won or shared the Western Conference title from 1912 to 1914 and took the title outright in 1916 and in 1918. Other powerhouses included Kansas, coached by Forrest C. "Phog" Allen; Purdue under Ward "Piggy" Lambert; and Missouri.

Professional Development

Organized professional basketball began at the tail end of the nineteenth century. The National Basketball League, with teams in Philadelphia, New York City, Brooklyn, and southern New Jersey, was formally organized in 1898 and lasted for two seasons. The first two decades of the twentieth century saw many professional teams and leagues begin in the East, but organization was fluid. Players often appeared in different leagues and teams within a season. Many professional teams started out as YMCA clubs. The Buffalo Germans, for example, turned pro in 1905 after winning the national AAU title and demonstrating basket-ball techniques at the 1904 Olympics. From 1895 to 1925 the Germans took on all challengers, winning 792 games while losing only 86.

Original Celtics

At the end of World War I, professional basketball was a collection of loosely organized leagues comprised of teams whose players could shift allegiances easily, taking the best offer they could get. This changed with the emergence of the Original Celtics. Named for the New York Celtics, a pre-World War I settlement-house team, the Original Celtics were organized in 1918 by Jim Furey, a New York promoter, and his brother, Tom. After the Celtics' unexceptional first season, the Fureys lured such players as Nat Holman and Chris Leonard from the New York Whirlwinds and built a team around Henry "Dutch" Dehnert, a talented pivot man with no high school or college experience; Joe Lapchick, one of the finest big men of the game; Swede Grimstead; and Johnny Beckman, considered the finest free-throw shooter of his time. These players were signed to the first individual contracts in the game's history and were paid by the season instead of by the game, which ended the practice of switching teams or leagues for the first good offer.

Celtic Dominance

The dominant team in the New York region, the Original Celtics not only sparked interest in basketball as a professional sport but also contributed to the development of the game. At a time when basketball was seen as strictly an individual game in which each player considered himself responsible for the person opposite him at the center jump, the Celtics played as a team. Each Celtic guarded the nearest man, regardless of whose personal opponent he was. Along with teamwork, the Celtics developed refinements to the game, including the pivot play, the switching defense, and the give-and-go offense. Superb showmen and excellent athletes, they experimented constantly, frequently staging brilliant passing exhibitions in games against overmatched opponents.

COLLEGIATE BASKETBALL
NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

1910—Columbia (Harry A. Fisher, coach)

1911—St. John's, Brooklyn (C. B. Allen, coach)

1912—Wisconsin (Walter Meanwell, coach)

1913—U.S. Navy (Louis P. Wenzell, coach)

1915—Illinois (Ralph R. Jones, coach)

1916—Wisconsin (Walter Meanwell, coach)

1917—Washington State (J. F. Bohler, coach)

1918—Syracuse (Edmund Dollard, coach)

1919—Minnesota (Dr. L. J. Cooke, coach)

NATIONAL AMATEUR ATHLETIC
UNION BASKETBALL CHAMPIONS

The AAU, which held its first basketball championship in 1897, did not hold a championship game from 1902 to 1909; the AAU Championship resumed in Chicago in 1910, was suspended for two more years, then was permanently reestablished in 1913. YMCA teams dominated the early tournaments but were supplanted by college teams in the early 1920s. The first open-bottom nets, made as early as 1906, were approved for championship play in the 1912-1913 season.

1910—Company F, Portage National Guard (Wisconsin)

1911—No competition

1912—No competition

1913—Cornell (Armour Playground), Chicago

1914—Cornell (Armour Playground), Chicago

1915—Olympic Club, San Francisco

1916—University of Utah, Salt Lake City

1917—Illinois Athletic Club, Chicago

1918—No competition

1919—Los Angeles Athletic Club

Source:

Modern Encyclopedia oj Basketball, edited by Zander Hollander (New York: Four Winds, 1969).

Philadelphia SPHAs

Another formidable team was the Philadelphia SPHAs, named for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association. Beginning play in 1918, the SPHAs won seven local championships in thirteen seasons. The all-Jewish team played most of the top independent teams of the era and won more games than they lost, but their fame was confined mostly to the East. The SPHAs were coached by Eddie Gottlieb, who later founded the Philadelphia Warriors.

Early Players

Notable early professional players were Max Friedman, who turned pro in 1909 and played in every pro league until 1927; Barney Sedran, who turned pro in 1911 and played for many teams in a fifteen-year career; and Nat Holman, who played for Germantown, the New York Whirlwinds, and the Original Celtics. Holman and Sedran were the two premier little men of the game, making the Whirlwinds probably the best pro team of the early period until the advent of the Original Celtics. These and other players helped to popularize professional basketball and exposed more people to the developing skills of ball-handling, team play, and accurate shooting. The pro teams introduced barnstorming, playing college, high school, AAU, and YMCA teams, mostly along the East Coast.

Sources:

Modern Encyclopedia of Basketball, edited by Zander Hollander (NewYork: Four Winds, 1969);

Douglas A. Noverr and Lawrence E. Ziewacz, The Games They Played: Sports in American History, 1865-1980 (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983);

The Official NBA Basketball Encyclopedia, second edition, edited by Alex Sachare (New York: Villard, 1994).

BASKETBALL: FROM NCAA FAST TIMES TO NBA FAST BREAKS

Limited Popularity

At the start of the 1950s Basketball was a local and regional spectator sport in America. While it is true that this distinctly American game (invented by James Naismith, a Canadian at the Springfield, Massachusetts, YMCA Training College) had gained favor throughout the world, basketball remained a game that, for sports fans at least, simply filled the space in the winter between football and baseball seasons. National interest in basketball was restricted to the late spring, when both the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament were played.

Crooked Collegians

College basketball saw perhaps both its finest and its worst hour of the decade in 1950. In the spring City College of New York (CCNY), which had gone 17-5 during the regular season pulled off the singular feat of winning both the National Invitational Tournament (NIT)—CCNY 69, Bradley 61—and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA)—CCNY 71, Bradley 68. Both final games were played in the mecca of basketball, Madison Square Garden in New York City, and both were intense games, hard fought to the final buzzer. CCNY'striumph was tarnished when it was learned that the team had on several occasions shaved points and controlled point spreads, which was the basis for betting. They were not alone. Before the dust had settled on the basketball scandals, CCNY, New York University (NYU), Long Island University (LIU), Manhattan, and—all in New York City—Toledo, Kentucky, and Bradley were implicated. Clair Bee, LIU's coach and author of the "Chip Hilton" adolescent sports novels was put in the position of having to admit that, at least at the college level, sports do not always build character. Even Hollywood got into the act by rushing through production of the B movie The Basketball Fix(1951).

Sources of Corruption

There is a variety of explanations for what went wrong in college basketball: the decay in the quality of life in urban areas; the loosening of moral standards throughout society after World War II; the hustling of naive college boys by smooth city gambling sharks; the growing number of college athletes from impoverished families; and some observers even blamed the influence of desegregation and a distinctly "black" morality. The most reasonable explanation is that college basketball had become commercialized, and gamblers seized the opportunity to exploit the national interest. The financial temptation to a corruptible coach was hard to resist. The coaches escaped any significant scrutiny though, and they were absolved of responsibility for cheating. The players took the blame and were banned from playing in the professional leagues.

The Birth of the NBA

The sudden loss of interest in college basketball finally had presented a great opportunity for professional basketball to seize the center stage, and by the end of the decade the pros had captured the attentions of basketball fans. But in 1950 professional basketball was in crisis, the National Basketball League (NBL, 1937-1949) and Basketball Association of American (BAA, 1946-1949), had folded and a new seventeen-team league NBA was formed. The next year the NBA started with eleven teams but ended with ten when Washington disbanded in mid season. In 1954 the NBA was reduced to eight teams located in Syracuse, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Fort Wayne, Minneapolis, Rochester, and Milwaukee. By 1959 the Fort Wayne franchise had moved to Detroit, and the Rochester and Milwaukee franchises had been replaced by Cincinnati and Saint Louis. Franchise stability was hardly the hall-mark of the early NBA. There were, however, extremely important developments in professional basketball that assured continued growth and interest.

Integration

The first important commitment made by the NBA was to integration. From the first season, when the Boston Celtics drafted Duquesne's Chuck Cooper, several franchises actively pursued black Basketball stars. Before the end of the decade the league's most heralded players were black.

Fast Breaks and Defense Make Dynasties

The second important commitment made by the NBA was to changing the style of the game. During the early part of the decade, when the league was still searching for an identity, Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics redefined offense with behind-the-back and "no-look" passes that befuddled opponents and sent fans into a frenzy. Cousy's and the Celtics' philosophy (outlined in his 1975 memoír, The Killer Instinct) was to get the ball up the floor as quickly as possible and intimidate the opposition. The success of this style of play was assured when the Celtics acquired the rights to draft Bill Russell.

Bill Russell

Russell had led San Francisco to two straight NCAA titles (1955 and 1956) and had dominated the U.S. Olympic team in Melbourne. When he joined the Celtics, the impact was immediate. Russell's style of assertive defense and rebounding allowed him to get the ball to Cousy in the open court before the opposition could prepare to defend. The Boston Celtics won the 1957 NBA title in Russell's rookie year, lost it the next year (when Russell was injured), and then proceeded to win ten more championships over the next eleven years, including eight in a row (1959-1966). In a decade of professional sports dynasties, the Boston Celtics were simply the best.

Time Races On: The Advent of the Shot Clock

While the Boston Celtics were always an exciting team to watch, the rest of the teams in the NBA needed help attracting fans. A simple rule change provided the levels of excitement fans craved. It added speed and action to the game. On 22 November 1950 Fort Wayne beat Minneapolis 19—18. In another game that season, Indianapolis beat Rochester 75—73 in six overtimes. These games may have been close, but they were boring. The fans who came to watch NBA basketball were not excited by the tactic of stalling. They were also not excited by purposeful fouling and rough play. They wanted action. It was not until 1954, however, that the league finally took the advice of Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone and adopted the twenty-four-second shot clock. Biasone reasoned that since NBA teams averaged a shot about once every eighteen seconds anyway, a rule that forced this pace would eliminate stalling at the end of games. The league also adopted the policy of limiting each team to six fouls in each quarter.

Results

The result of these two changes was immediate and lasting. In the first year of the new rules the average score per team per game jumped more than thirteen points and by the end of the decade all teams were averaging more than one hundred points a game. On 27 February 1959 the Russell-Cousy Celtics beat the Minneapolis Lakers 173—139.

Source:

Stanley Cohen, The Game They Played (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977).

basketball game played generally indoors by two opposing teams of five players each. Basketball was conceived in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith , a physical education instructor at the YMCA college in Springfield, Mass., as a way to condition outdoor athletes during the winter months. His original list of 13 rules has undergone a century of revision, leading to faster pacing and greater athleticism. Today basketball is one of the most popular American sports and one the rest of the world has adopted.

Basic Rules

At each end of the court—usually about 92 ft (28 m) long and 50 ft (15 m) wide—is a bottomless basket made of white cord net and suspended from a metal ring, 18 in. (46 cm) in diameter, which is attached 10 ft (3.05 m) above the floor (usually hardwood) to a backboard made of fiberglass, wood, or other material. Players may throw, dribble (bounce), or shoot the basketball (an inflated ball usually made of leather or rubber) but may not run with it or kick it.

Teams try to advance the ball and shoot it through one basket (the ball must enter from above) and to keep the opposition from scoring through the other. Each field goal, or basket, scores two points, or three points if shot from beyond a specified distance (21 ft/6 m in U.S. colleges, slightly longer in international and professional play). Teams must shoot the ball within a prescribed time limit (24 sec in professional and international games; 30 sec in women's collegiate play; 35 sec in men's collegiate play).

Any player making illegal body contact with an opposing player is assessed a foul; the opposing team may be given possession of the ball, or an opposing player awarded free throws at the basket from the foul line. Each made foul shot is worth one point. Players who exceed the foul limit (usually five, but six in professional and international play) are disqualified from the game. International and collegiate basketball games have two 20-min halves, professionals play four 12-min quarters, and high schoolers play four 8-min quarters.

Professional Basketball

Professional basketball began (1896) in New York City and was at one time played on courts enclosed by wire mesh (basketball players are still occasionally referred to as "cagers" ). Until the 1950s it languished in popularity behind college basketball and such touring black teams as the Harlem Globetrotters and the New York Rens.

The merger (1949) of the National Basketball League and the rival Basketball Association of America into the National Basketball Association (NBA) led to greater popularity. The appearance of stars like George Mikan , the signing of black players beginning in 1950, the temporary disrepute of the college game owing to gambling scandals in the early 1950s, and the adoption of the 24-sec shot clock in 1954, further boosted the NBA.

Its success inspired the formation of several competing leagues, among them the American Basketball Association (ABA), founded in 1967 and merged into the NBA in 1975. In the 1980s the emergence of charismatic players like "Magic" Johnson (see Johnson, Earvin ), Larry Bird , and Michael Jordan , combined with aggressive marketing, made the NBA hugely successful, so that basketball often seemed the premier U.S. professional sport. A labor dispute in late 1998 delayed and shortened the 1998–99 season, but the sport weathered that bout of labor strife. Another dispute in late 2011 similarly delayed and shortened the 2011–12 season..

College Basketball

Basketball is a major sport in U.S. colleges. Postseason tournaments, first the National Invitation Tournament (begun 1938) and then the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships (begun 1939), soon attracted enough attention to fill large arenas like New York's Madison Square Garden. Point-shaving and game-fixing scandals unsettled college basketball in both 1950–51 and 1961, but did not diminish fan loyalty for extended periods.

The NCAA championship tournament, once secondary to the NIT, grew enormously from the 1960s into the 1990s. Large live audiences, national television coverage, and competitive parity have helped to make the NCAA's "March Madness" and Final Four (the semifinal and final rounds of the tournament) one of the most popular of all U.S. sporting events.

Olympic and International Basketball

An exhibition match was played at the 1904 Olympics, but basketball did not become an official part of the games until 1936. International rules and court dimensions differ slightly from U.S. standards. Still, the United States outclassed the rest of the world until 1972, when the Soviet Union defeated the U.S. team for the gold medal (despite American protests that the Soviets had been allowed to score a basket after the game had ended). In the 1980s, many nations achieved parity with the United States, which was still fielding a team of collegians. The U.S. Olympic Committee therefore assembled for the 1992 games a "Dream Team" composed of one collegian and the finest professional players, who handily won the gold medal.

The International Basketball Federation (FIBA, from its name in French), which was founded in 1932, governs international basketball competition, including the FIBA World Championship (est. 1950) and FIBA Women's World Championship (est. 1953). Contested by national teams, these quadrennial championships have been held during the same year since 1986. Other FIBA championships include regional titles for both national and club teams and the FIBA World Club Championship (est. 2010). Professional basketball leagues exist in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere.

Women's Basketball

Women's basketball has grown rapidly since the 1970s. Until then, women and girls had been allowed to play only a six-player game in which offensive and defensive players were rooted to one half of the court. Today full court action in women's college competition and in the Women's National Basketball Association (since 1997) exhibits advanced skills and fast-paced play, and has attained wider popularity than many other women's sports.

Bibliography

See P. Axthelm, The City Game (1971); D. Smith, Basketball—Multiple Offense and Defense (1982); A. Wolff, 100 Years of Hoops (1991); The Official NBA Basketball Encyclopedia (2d ed. 1994).

Basketball

Sources

Origins of the Game. In the fall of 1891 James Naismith, a physical-education instructor at the Young Men’s Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, developed basketball to replace gymnastics and calisthenics routinely practiced during the winter months. After studying the attributes of lacrosse, football, rugby, and soccer, he created a game in which players would bounce and pass a soccer ball from one another and score points by tossing the ball into a suspended goal. The fundamental concept for the game came to him from watching rugby players spend the winter months throwing rugby balls into boxes. Instead of boxes for goals, Naismith used bottomless peach baskets hung at opposite ends of the railing surrounding the YMCA gymnasium, ten feet above the floor. On 21 December 1891 he introduced basketball to his students, who had tired of their instructor’s experimentation with new games that fall. Naismith recalled that “I asked the boys to try it once as a favor to me, and after the ball was first thrown up, there was no need for further coaxing.” Some students wanted to name the new game “Naismith Ball,” but when the inventor demurred, they started calling it “basket ball.”

From the YMCA to the AAU. Basketball quickly spread throughout the YMCAs of the Northeast. The organization used the game as a means to increase membership and promote spiritual growth through athletic competition. Rivalry between the YMCAs became so intense that the organization attempted to regulate the game through the establishment of separate leagues, but the organizations were soon undermined by professionalism, which, according to Luther Halsey Gulick, the director of the YMCA, “resulted in men of lower character going into the game, for men of serious purpose in life do not care to go into that kind of thing.” In 1896 the YMCA turned to the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) for help in regulating the extramural basketball leagues and curbing the growth of professionalism. The AAU gained control of the sport by exercising editorial control over the official rules of basketball, which had been published by the A. G. Spalding & Brothers Company in 1894. The AAU also established leagues and sanctioned regional and national championships. AAU leagues and championship play first emerged in New York City in 1898, and then spread to other cities across the nation. The first AAU national basketball championship, however, was not held until 1908.

Professional Basketball. Independent professional basketball teams, which resisted the control of the AAU, emerged in the late 1890s, particularly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After gaining control of amateur basketball in 1896, the AAU attempted to standardize the game by eliminating rough play and requiring teams to pay registration fees. Philadelphia teams, which played a rough style of basketball, objected to paying registration fees and formed a rival organization, the Eastern Amateur Basketball Association (EABA), in 1898, to accomplish the same goals of the AAU without the registration fees. The EABA, however, promoted professionalism, as team managers and players devised various money-making schemes. In 1899 the EABA became the National League of Professional Basketball (NLPB), with the primary function of making sure that owners and players would honor team contracts. Before the establishment of the NLPB, owners would raid teams for the best players, and players would jump teams for better pay. The NLPB folded in 1903 because it could not force managers and players to honor team contracts.

College Basketball. Colleges and universities throughout the Midwest and Northeast quickly embraced basketball as the Minnesota State School of Agriculture and Mining defeated Hamline College, 9–3, in the first intercollegiate game on 9 February 1895. This game, however, was played with nine-man teams, and a month later the first game played between five-man teams resulted in the University of Chicago defeating the University of Iowa YMCA, 15–12. Northeast colleges and universities took the lead in the development of intercollegiate basketball leagues in the 1900s, with the establishment of the Eastern League, composed of Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and Princeton. Basketball

became the chief sport for college women after Senda Berenson, the director of physical training at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, introduced the game to her students in 1892. Berenson and representatives of Radcliffe, Oberlin, and the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics formed the Women’s Basketball Rules Committee, which codified women’s basketball rules and had them published by the A. G. Spalding & Brothers Company in 1899. In the first intercollegiate women’s basketball game, Smith defeated Bryn Mawr, 4–3, in 1901. Berenson, however, emphasized intramural over intercollegiate games because they facilitated greater student participation in physical training and stressed the social and cooperative rather competitive aspects of sports.

Sources

Albert G. Applin II, “From Muscular Christianity to the Market Place: The History of Men’s and Boys’ Basketball in the United States, 1891-1957,” dissertation, University of Massachusetts, 1982;

Neil D. Isaacs, All the Moves: A History of College Basketball (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

BASKETBALL

College Ball

In the 1930s college basketball was the dominant form of organized basketball. The Depression had sunk the professional American Basketball League (ABL), which had been formed in the 1920s, but it actually revived the college game, which was played mostly in gymnasiums and armories. Those lean years inspired new promotions, one of which was the college doubleheader, such as the games played at Madison Square Garden, the brainchild of sportswriter Ned Irish, who later founded the New York Knickerbockers. Irish brought in big-name universities, mostly from eastern cities. The first intersectional games on 29 December 1934 brought 16,188 fans into the Garden. The games introduced young talent, helped spread the popularity of basketball, and made lots of money. Other cities followed suit in their hometown arenas. On the West Coast, at Stanford, Hank Luisetti was revolutionizing the game with his one-handed jump shot and other innovations. Play became faster with the elimination of the center jump after every basket. Even a reformulated ABL in 1933 could not compete with collegiate basketball. The Depression added another twist in the absence of a well-organized professional league. While there was not enough money to support players full-time, semipro leagues prospered. When college stars graduated they could still play ball on company-run clubs, such as Henry Clothiers (Wichita), Diamond DX Oilers (Tulsa), and Healey Motors (Kansas City); the opportunity allowed young men to pursue business careers while continuing to play basketball.

The Celtics Live

The original Boston Celtics had been the elite professional basketball team of the 1920s, winning as much as 90 percent of their games. Several of the veterans teamed up with younger players to form a new squad in 1931 as part of the new ABL. Few professional teams managed to survive the turmoil of the 1930s, but the Celtics and the Brooklyn Visitations were two teams that helped keep the professional game from dying out entirely. Abe Saperstein's Globetrotters, based in Chicago but called "Harlem" because of its all-black squad, could also be a match for any other professional team.

Rens and Sphas

The best professional teams, however, were ethnic—one Jewish, the other black. The South Philadelphia Hebrew Association basketball team (Sphas) team, called the Sphas, boasted all-Jewish players under Coach Eddie Gottlieb and star Harry Litwack. The team won seven titles in thirteen years and dominated the independent clubs they regularly faced. The Sphas played on the ballroom floor of the plush Broadwood Hotel, which featured dancing after the game. The New York Rens, with only seven players, were basketball's best team between 1932 and 1936. Their home court was the Renaissance Casino ballroom in Harlem, which is how the team got its name. While barnstorming during the Depression years, they faced prejudice and racism; but they played white teams, including the Celtics, regularly and usually beat them. The Rens' record for those years was 473-49, including a winning streak of 88 games. They demonstrated precision, teamwork, and stamina, preferring to let other teams call time-outs. The team included six-footers, like Wee Willie Smith, and two-sport professionals like Bill Yancey, Eyre Saitch, and Fats Jenkins, who was only five feet six inches tall. After team founder Bob Douglas was forced to introduce young players in 1939, his new team won the World Professional Tournament that season.

The NBL

Eastern cities dominated basketball, but one league that proved to be a strong link in the chain that became organized professional basketball was the Midwest Industrial League, which included company teams such as Goodyear, Firestone, and General Electric. Located in the Ohio-Indiana region, these teams felt capable of competing with professional clubs. Indeed, Goodyear won the first league championship, and Firestone the next two. In 1937-1938 thirteen teams joined to form the National Basketball League (NBL). Franchise problems would deplete the league, which included such teams as the Oshkosh All-Stars and the Kankakee Gallagher Trojans—and later eastern teams such as the Syracuse Nationals and the Rochester Royals. But the league survived because it recognized the virtues of the college sport, recruited the best college players, and fashioned its rules along college lines. NBL teams were the seedlings of the future National Basketball Association (NBA). Ironically, the great professional teams in the eastern cities all but died out, but the NBL lasted for more than ten years, before the postwar rise of the competing Basketball Association of America, with which it would merge to form the NBA in 1949-1950.

Sources:

Arthur Ashe, A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African American Athlete, 1919-1945, revised edition (New York: Amistad, 1993);

Zander Hollander, ed., The Pro Basketball Encyclopedia (Los Angeles: Corwin Books, 1977);

John D. McCallum, College Basketball, U.S.A., Since 1892 (New York: Stein & Day, 1978).

BASKETBALL

A Lackluster Game: College Basketball

Having been invented by James Naismith in the winter of 1891, basketball was not quite thirty years old as the decade of the 1920s began. In its adolescence the game had difficulties that tended to discourage both athletic participation and spectator interest. The interpretation of rules varied from game to game and court to court, thereby resulting in inconsistent officiating and confused players and observers. One set of referees often repeatedly officiated games for a single team and thus became virtually part of that team. As a consequence the phrase "home court advantage" carried real meaning, and few teams were eager to gamble their win-loss record at another school's gymnasium where they would be under the control of another team's officials. With two twenty-minute halves, games were short and extremely low-scoring, and until 1923 only one player from each team was allowed to shoot foul shots.

Few Intersectional Games

Only a few college conferences, such as the Big Ten or the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League, had any degree of regular play with actual schedules. Games between colleges from different sections of the country were even rarer. During the 1920s no single team dominated, though Penn was regarded as a power in the Eastern League. College basketball was not a major sport during the Golden Age, except perhaps once a year during the national championships, which had only recently been established. At the conclusion of the 1919-1920 season New York University traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to win the National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball tournament and become the first national collegiate basketball champion of the decade.

Professional Basketball

Professional basketball, which in the 1920s attracted far more spectators than did college basketball, was extremely disorganized. A player might be part of one team one night and another the next, according to whoever offered him more money. A good professional player could earn anywhere from $40 to $125 a game, and he would possibly play one hundred or more games per season with a dozen or more teams. Sophisticated, well-planned-out team play, as a consequence, did not exist as the decade began.

Birth of Team Identity:

The "Original Celtics." Around 1922 Jim Furey assembled the first true professional basketball team and called it the "Original Celtics." As manager he contracted with players—Johnny Beckman, Pete Barry, Ernie Reich, Dutch Dehnert, Horse Haggerty, and Joe Trippe—to play only for him during the season. Furey hired a coach, Johnny Witte, and guaranteed his players a straight salary so that they could concentrate on developing their basketball skills rather than on finding teams to play with and against. There had been other teams called the Celtics before Furey's, but the Original Celtics were the first truly organized team. They dominated professional basketball in the 1920s because for the first time the same athletes played together game after game from the beginning to the end of the season. They developed plays and tactics that revolutionized the sport. During the decade shooting skill was regarded as a good player's major attribute, with the ability to take a physical beating a close second. The Original Celtics instead stressed individual and team speed and strategy; these qualities allowed them to get more shots than their opponents and to avoid a certain amount of the rough play.

Influences

Because of their skill and team cohesiveness, the Celtics defeated opponents by great margins. After building up substantial leads, they experimented with new plays and maneuvers during the game. Their successes soon prompted others to follow their lead and to develop similarly cohesive teams: for example, the New York Whirlwinds, the Cleveland Rosenblums, and the Washington Palace Five (named after the Washington, D.C., laundry of owner George Preston Marshall). Marshall, who also owned the National Football League's Washington Redskins, became professional basketball's greatest advocate during the 1920s.

Game Boosters

The Celtics themselves served as important boosters of professional basketball by playing 125 to 150 games per season and maintaining a win average of over .900. They tried to play every night and twice on Sunday, if possible. The Celtics eventually became part of professional basketball's American League, which adopted the same rules as intercollegiate basketball and eliminated the two-handed dribble. These changes eased the transition of such college stars as Vic Hanson of Syracuse University into the professional ranks. The Original Celtics' Beckman, who had previously been a top scorer for Nanticote in the Pennsylvania State League, was considered the best professional basketball player of the decade.

Source:

Tom Meany, "Basketball," in Sport's Golden Age, edited by Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein (New York: Harper, 1948).

Basketball. James Naismith, an instructor at the YMCA Training School at Springfield College in Massachusetts, invented basketball in 1891 as an indoor winter game. The object was to throw a soccer ball into an elevated peach basket (the “goal”). Players could not run with the ball (which led to dribbling) and received a “foul” for rule violations. Play resumed after each goal with a “jump ball.” By 1895, field goals were two points and foul shots one, and backboards were added to prevent fans from interfering with shots. Two years later the number of players on a team was fixed at five. They wore knee pads because play was rough, with frequent fights over balls that went out of bounds. Cages were built around the court to keep the ball in play and prevent fan interference.

Basketball quickly gained popularity across the nation. At YMCAs, settlement houses, and school yards social workers believed that it improved morals, promoted teamwork, reduced juvenile delinquency, and Americanized recent immigrants. By the 1920s, it had become a cornerstone of interscholastic sports in the small towns of Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana, where high school basketball symbolized hometown pride.

Basketball was well liked by women college students. In 1892, the Smith College gymnasium director, Senda Berenson, modified the rules to make it more appropriate for young ladies. She curtailed physical play by forbidding grabbing of the ball and promoted teamwork by permitting no one to hold it more than three seconds or dribble more than three times. Berenson redesigned the court, placing three women in the offensive zone, three in the defensive, and two in midcourt to reduce fatigue (reflecting contemporary views of women's limited physical capacity) and encourage team play. In 1895, Stanford University defeated the University of California–Berkeley, 2–1, in the first women's intercollegiate contest. However, the game was soon deemphasized by women's physical educators who opposed female competitive sports. In the 1930s and 1940s industrial league teams dominated women's play. Not until the era of Title IX in the 1970s did the game regain its popularity on campus. Renewed interest led to the rise of two women's pro leagues in 1996: the Women's National Basketball League and the defunct American Basketball League.

In the first male college game, also in 1895, Minnesota State topped Hamline University 9–3. However, basketball did not become a major sport until the 1930s. In 1938, New York sports writers organized the National Invitational Tournament at New York's Madison Square Garden. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament followed in 1939. A major college‐basketball scandal, involving gambling, point shaving, and thrown games, occurred in 1951, causing Madison Square Garden to drop big‐time basketball, ruining New York City's college programs, and harming New York's status as the game's mecca. College basketball regained its luster in the 1960s, abetted by UCLA's ten championships between 1964 and 1975. By the end of the century, NCAA tournament had become a premier American sporting event.

Professional men's basketball began in 1898 with metropolitan Philadelphia's short‐lived National Basketball League. In the 1920s, the touring New York Original Celtics and the black New York Rens were the dominant clubs. Top white teams also played in regional semipro leagues like the American Basketball League (1933–1946) and the National Basketball League (1937–1948). In 1946, owners of major urban sports arenas formed the Basketball Association of America (BAA) to augment use of their facilities. In 1949 it merged with the NBL to form the National Basketball Association (NBA), which became racially integrated in 1950. Several franchises failed, and smaller cities' teams relocated to larger metropolises. The Boston Celtics dominated the NBA for several years, with eleven championships between 1957 and 1969. Rule innovations, talented performers, flashy play, and television helped build attendance from under two million in 1960 to ten million in 1980. Such NBA superstars as Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls became multimillionaires through their salaries and product endorsements and enjoyed widespread celebrity.
See also Sports; YMCA and YWCA.

Bibliography

Neil D. Isaacs , All the Moves: A History of College Basketball, 1975.
Robert Peterson , Cages to Jumpshots: Pro Basketball's Early Years, 1990.

Steven A. Riess

Basketball

In December 1891, James Naismith, a Canadian-born instructor at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, introduced the game of basketball. The YMCA soon published rules for the game, which spread rapidly throughout settlement houses, colleges, and high schools. In March 1892 Senda Berenson adapted the game for her Smith College students by restricting the players to zones, thus limiting their running to allay concerns about female debility. By the end of the year girls in West Coast schools eagerly took to the game. The YMCA promoted state and regional competitions and offered a national championship in 1896.

Professional teams appeared by the late 1890s and high school students, both boys and girls, organized their own leagues for competition. High school play became particularly intense in certain regions of the country, such as Indiana and Kentucky, where the game took precedence in the sporting culture as it fostered communal pride and identity. In Iowa the girls' game even superceded the boys' in popularity, despite its adherence to the divided court system until the 1993-1994 season. In the South historically black colleges developed particularly strong female contingents, and their white counterparts, company teams composed of young females, barnstormed the country, often playing and defeating men's teams.

The game retained a strong presence in urban areas, however, where social clubs, churches, schools, and companies sponsored teams. Leagues in northern cities featured integrated games and African-American teams proved among the best by the World War I era. Colleges began sponsoring competitions to attract the best players to campus, such as the national invitational tournament started by the University of Chicago in 1918. Racial, ethnic, and religious rivalries spurred the formation of teams and fostered greater assimilation in the process. Organizations originally founded to preserve ethnic cultures, such as the German Turners, Czech Sokols, and Polish Falcons, acquiesced to the interests of second-generation youths in American sports, such as basketball. Both the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization and the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) aimed to counteract the Protestant influences of the YMCA. The latter conducted its own National Catholic Interscholastic Basketball Tournament at Chicago's Loyola University after 1923. By the 1930s the CYO claimed the largest basketball league in the world, as its Chicago archdiocese accounted for more than 400 teams.

The best youths earned college scholarships or graduated to semipro or professional units that proliferated throughout American cities. Others joined barnstorming teams, like Chicago's Savoy 5 (later renamed the Harlem Globetrotters). Girls, too, found similar opportunities, particularly on employer-sponsored teams in the South.

The international scope of the game resulted in its inclusion in the 1936 Olympic Games. Nationally, basketball prospered throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, gradually assuming a primary role in inner-city playgrounds and urban community recreation programs. Like past sponsors, entrepreneurs initiated basketball camps, tournaments, and traveling teams that promised training, continuous competition, and offered hopes of recognition by high school, college, and professional coaches. By the late twentieth century the best high school boys eschewed college play, opting for direct employment in the National Basketball Association. Most, however, honed their skills on thousands of community teams that offered age group competition or played recreational basketball on city playgrounds or rural spaces.

See also: Sports; Title IX and Girls Sports; YWCA and YMCA.

bibliography

Axthelm, Pete. 1970. The City Game: Basketball, from the Playground to Madison Square Garden. New York: Harper's Magazine Press.

George, Nelson. 1992. Elevating the Game. New York: Harper Collins.

Hult, Joan S., and Marianna Trekell, eds. 1991. A Century of Women's Basketball: From Frailty to Final Four. Reston, VA: American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.

Gerald R. Gems

BASKETBALL: THE PROS

Professional Basketball Expansion

The National Basketball Association (NBA) began the decade with eight teams. By the end of the decade the league had expanded to seventeen teams, had a fat television contract, and had seen attendance jump from under two million in 1965 to over five million. Throughout much of the 1950s professional basketball was being played in the shadow of the college game and was searching for an identity; toward the end of that decade the sport saw its future in Bill Russell—the big man with grace and speed. But professional basketball did not catch up with Russell until the 1960s, when men emerged who along with Russell defined the modern game. Most notable among the new breed of athletes was Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt the Stilt, as he was called, combined imposing size, intelligence, and legendary strength in challenging Russell for basketball supremacy. The rivalry between the two superstars gave professional basketball much-needed drama. Despite the influx of great basketball talent from the college ranks into the pros during the 1960s, there remained only one true super team, the Boston Celtics.

The Celtics

No professional sports team—neither the 1950s Yankees nor the 1960s Green Bay Packers—dominated its sport in the same way the Celtics ruled basketball during the decade. Led by their cigar-smoking coach Red Auerbach, the Celtics won ten of eleven NBA championships between 1959 and 1969, only four of them requiring the maximum seven games. The combination of the masterful guard Bob Cousy and the best center to that time, Bill Russell, with such supporting players as Bill Sharman, John Havlicek, Tommy Heinsohn, K. C. Jones, and Sam Jones was all but un-beatable. Only the Philadelphia 76ers, led by Chamberlain, were able to challenge the Celtics' supremacy by winning the title in 1967, the year Auerbach turned over coaching duties to Bill Russell, who continued to play for another year. The thirty-two-year-old Russell was the first black ever to coach a professional major league sports team.

The ABA

In 1962 the American Basketball League (ABL) was created to take the professional game into cities without hope of an NBA franchise. The ABL instituted the three-point shot, giving an extra point for shots made beyond twenty-five feet from the goal, but the incentive to shooters was insufficient to attract the audience the league needed to survive, and the ABL died in December 1963. In 1967 another attempt was made to organize an alternative league. The American Basketball Association (ABA) was better funded and better organized than the ABL. By the end of the decade the ABA was able to attract some star prospects from the college draft, providing it the credibility among fans it needed to survive. Even so, the ABA was considered second-rank basketball. Commissioner George Mikan instituted a red, white, and blue ball for league play. Critics suggested that the ABA ball looked as if it had bounced off the nose of a seal.

Black Man's Game

Outside of Boston basketball was by the middle of the decade considered a black man's game, and in an era of racial strife, that perception inhibited the marketability of the game. Nonetheless, the play was so good, the rivalries so intense, and the promotion so expert that the NBA managed to overcome spectators' racism.

basketball Game that originated in the USA, and is now played worldwide. Devised in 1891 by Dr James Naismith, it has been an Olympic sport since 1936. It is played by two teams of five (plus substitutes), usually indoors. The court is up to 27.8m (91ft) long and 15m (49ft) wide. At each end is a backboard on which a bottomless netting basket hangs from a hoop 3m (10ft) above the floor. The object is to put the ball down through the opposing team's basket, scoring points. In normal play, two points are scored when the ball is thrown from within a zone close to the basket, and three points from farther away; a free throw (for a foul) counts one point. Players may move with the ball when dribbling it one-handed. With growing commercialization and the worldwide transmission of National Basketball Association (NBA) games, basketball is one of the most popular spectator sports.

bas·ket·ball / ˈbaskitˌbôl/ • n. a game played between two teams of five players in which goals are scored by throwing a ball through a netted hoop fixed above each end of the court. ∎  the inflated ball used in this game.

basketball •all, appal (US appall), awl, Bacall, ball, bawl, befall, Bengal, brawl, call, caul, crawl, Donegal, drawl, drywall, enthral (US enthrall), fall, forestall, gall, Galle, Gaul, hall, haul, maul, miaul, miscall, Montreal, Naipaul, Nepal, orle, pall, Paul, pawl, Saul, schorl, scrawl, seawall, Senegal, shawl, small, sprawl, squall, stall, stonewall, tall, thrall, trawl, wall, waul, wherewithal, withal, yawl •carryall • blackball • handball •patball • hardball • netball • baseball •paintball • speedball • heelball •meatball • stickball • pinball • spitball •racquetball • basketball • volleyball •eyeball, highball •oddball • softball • mothball •korfball • cornball •lowball, no-ball, snowball •goalball •cueball, screwball •goofball • stoolball • football •puffball • punchball • fireball •rollerball • cannonball • butterball •catchall • bradawl • holdall • Goodall