Basketball

Basketball is one of the few sports for which the precise origin is known. The game was invented in 1891 by James W. Naismith, an instructor at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, now Springfield College. The game was originally played with peach baskets, and an attendant on a ladder retrieved the ball after a made basket. Naismith formulated 13 rules of the game, of which 12 still form the basics of the modern game.

In 1936, basketball made its first appearance as a medal sport at the Olympics. In 1976, women’s basketball was added to the programme. The United States has dominated international basketball. The USA won all the Olympic titles until 1972, when it was upset by the Soviet Union in a very controversial game. The Soviet women were originally the top team on the female side, but the USA women have surpassed them, winning the gold medal in 1984, 1988, and, as of 2024, all the Olympic titles since 1996.

Today, basketball has become one of the most popular sports in the world. US college basketball is very popular in the United States, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) has engendered international interest. In addition, numerous international leagues have added to the growth of the sport. In 1992, for the first time, the United States was allowed to use professional players from the NBA. This NBA All-Star Team, dubbed “The Dream Team” by the world’s media, is certainly the greatest basketball team ever assembled, and dominated the 1992 Olympic tournament.

An NBA All-Star team also represented the United States in 1996 and 2000, winning those gold medals as well, though the margin between the NBA and the rest of the world was shrinking. In 2004, despite using NBA players, the United States men won only a bronze medal. In 2008, the United States team again won the gold medal, after instituting a program to restore the USA to international prominence, under the tutelage of Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, and they repeated in 2012 and 2016, with Krzyzewski at the helm. The team won again at Tokyo 2020, with NBA’s San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich in charge, and repeated at Paris 2024, now under NBA’s Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr.

Diana Taurasi, from the United States, has won six Olympic basketball gold medals in her six Olympic appearances. In the gold medal count, she is followed by her compatriot Sue Bird, with five golds. Teresa Edwards (USA) is next on the table, also with five medals but one less gold than Bird. The only other female basketball player with five Olympic medals is Australian Lauren Jackson but, due to the US supremacy, all of her medals are silver or bronze.

Five men have won four Olympic medals through 2024: Americans Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James, and Soviets Sergey Belov and Gennady Volnov. While Carmelo and LeBron have won three golds and a bronze, Durant is the only male basketball player with four golds in his four Olympic appearances.

Basketball is governed worldwide by the Fédération Internationale de Basketball (FIBA), formerly known as the Fédération Internationale de Basket-ball Amateur, which was founded on 18 June 1932 in Geneva, Switzerland, with eight founding members: Argentina, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland. As a measure of its popularity, FIBA currently (2024) has 212 national federations as members.