7. Basketball

    James Naismith invented basketball in 1891. Naismith was a Canadian, but lived in the United States. He was a teacher at Springfield Training School in the state of Massachusetts. He taught sports and found there were no interesting games to play indoors in the winter months. So he thought of a game.

    Naismith's students played the first game of basketball in the Springfield gym in 1891. There were nine men on each team. They used a soccer ball. They put peach baskets on the gym wall. The goal or purpose of the game was to throw the bail in the basket. That is why he called the game basketball. A man with a ladder went to the basket. He climbed the ladder and took the ball out of the basket. Luckily, only one man got the ball into the basket in the first game.

    Basketball is a very fast game. Players must run up and down the basketball court or gym floor the whole game. At the same time they must control the ball. Today, most players are tall. Many of them are over seven feet tall and weigh more than 200 pounds. But one of basketball's great players was Barney Sedran. He played from 1912 to 1926 and is in the Basketball Hall of Fame. He was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and 118 pounds!

    Today, basketball is an international sport. In America, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has some of the best players in the world. Basketball is also an Olympic sport today. In the Olympics, the best teams from many countries play to show they are the best.

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