A teacher named James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. He was born in Almonte, Ontario, in Canada, and he worked as a physical education teacher. Basketball began in Springfield, Massachusetts, at a YMCA training school. It was made up as a game to play indoors in the winter.

Naismith nailed two peach baskets to the lower rail of the gym balcony, one on each side. The height of that rail happened to be 10 feet, and the first basketball hoops, in 1891, were peach baskets, and a basketball hoop is still 10 feet above the floor.

In the first rules, a goal was made when the ball was thrown or batted into the basket and stayed there. The ball could be thrown in any direction with one or both hands, never with a fist, and in the first games a player could not run with the ball, and had to throw it from the spot where it was caught.

The original rules were strict about fouls. Under the first rules, if a team made three fouls in a row, the other team was given a goal. A second foul disqualified a player until the next goal was scored. A player who was judged to have tried to injure an opponent was disqualified for the whole game.

A successful free throw counts one point today. Scoring changed early, when a rule from 1895-96 changed a field goal from three points to two, and a free throw from three points to one. Today a basket made from inside the three-point line counts two points, and a basket made from outside the line counts three points.

Backboards were installed in college rules in the 1896-97 season, and a backboard is a rectangle six feet wide and three and a half feet tall. The hoop is an orange metal ring, 18 inches across on the inside, with a net hanging from it.

The league that became the NBA began in 1946 as the Basketball Association of America, and took the name NBA in 1949. The NBA added the three-point shot for the 1979-80 season, first as a one-year trial. The NBA's three-point line is 23 feet, 9 inches from the middle of the basket, and 22 feet from the basket in the corners.

The game spread quickly from Springfield to other schools and YMCAs. Senda Berenson, a teacher at Smith College, changed the rules for women and ran the first women's college basketball game.

Basketball became an Olympic sport for men at the 1936 Games in Berlin, Germany. James Naismith was invited to throw the first jump ball and to hand out the medals.

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame is in Springfield, Massachusetts, the city where basketball was born. It was founded in 1959.

Words to know

• disqualified: put out
• balcony: high gym ledge
• fouls: rule breaks
• backboards: boards behind hoops
• trial: a test