A Little Basketball History cont
The invention of basketball is still celebrated in Springfield, Mass., home of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Naismith, was born in 1861 in Almonte, Ontario, Canada and eventually moved on to the Denver YMCA in 1895. Later he would direct the physical education department at the University of Kansas, where he stayed for 36 years. He died in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1939, three years after watching his game become an official Olympic sport at the 1936 Games in Berlin.
Fans today would hardly recognize the sport from its early games. First of all, the uniforms were different. 's first team in Springfield wore black, long-sleeve, wool jerseys and long gray trousers.
The early contests were brutal and often bloody. Players slammed into one another with reckless abandon, often causing brawls. These games were so intense that wire cages were built around the court to prevent the violence from spilling into the crowd. Hence the name cagers was associated with basketball.
The wire cages also protected the players from the fans, some of whom were known to throw bottles and nails onto the court. The atmosphere was so raucous that the refs often carried guns to keep the game and the crowd under control. Hitting a player with a technical foul just wouldn't have done the trick in basketball's early days.
