Basketball is a sport activity. It is a team sport. In basketball game there are two teams and in each of them there are five players. In this game points are scored by propelling a ball through a 10 feet high hoop under some organized rules. People make scores in this game by shooting the ball through the basket which is situated on a pole above. The team who shoots more balls through the basket in a given time wins the game. In this game the ball is passed between the teammates on the court by regularly bouncing it. No player can run with the ball on the court otherwise it will said foul. In basketball the tallest player of the team plays from the center place. And the persons who have the best ball handling skills and speed plays from the guard positions.

Basketball doesn’t have a very old history. It was started by a Canadian physical education student in the December, 1891. Dr. James Naismith, who was also an instructor at YMCA Training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. He developed basketball game for keeping his student occupied and in good fitness during the long New England winters to keep the student in shape. He personally wrote down the basic rules of the basketball. Earlier at his time peach baskets were used in place of nets. Until 1906 these peach baskets were used and then they were finally replaced by the metal hoops with backboards. With the help of Naismith’s handwritten diaries, discovered by his granddaughter in the early 2006, that he was very nervous when he was inventing the new game. On January 20, 1982 the first official game of basketball was played in the YMCA gymnasium. In this game there were 9 players and the final score of the game was 1-0. Only one basket was made from a distance of 25 feet. During the time of 1897-98, five numbers of players were made standard for playing.

The basketball equipment is very common and very less in number. However with the help of technology much advances can be seen in the basketball equipment. In this game there are only two important basketball equipments, one is basketball itself and the other one is court. A court is generally a flat rectangular surface with baskets at opposite ends. But in competitive games more basketball equipment is used such as clocks, scoresheets, scoreboards, and whistle-operated clock systems. These are modern basketball equipment which was not used in earlier times. The dimension of basketball court is 28 by 15 meters and in the NBA (National Basketball Association) it is 29 by 15 meters. The height of the baskets is 10 feet above the ground. There are special measurements for the size of the basketball also. But it is different for men and women. For women the official basketball size is 28.5” in circumference and it should be 20 oz in weight. For men the official basketball size is 29.5” in circumference and in weight it should be 22 oz.