a team sport in which the goal is to throw a ball through a hanging basket.
In 1891, J. Naismith, an instructor of anatomy at Springfield College (USA), worked out the rules of the game. The first game in Russia took place in 1906 in St. Petersburg. The systematic playing of basketball develops coordination of movement, trains organs of respiration and blood circulation, improves the regulatory function of the nervous system, develops muscles, and fortifies health.
The most important basketball tournaments are usually played on a rectangular court 26 m x 14 m in rooms not less than 7 m in height. Parallel to the base line, there are backboards supported on poles and baskets (metal rings with stretched nets that have no bottom) attached to the backboards. The circumference of the ball is 75–78 cm; its weight, 600–650 g. Two teams, each with 12 members, participate in the game. Five players are on the court at a time. (Players may be substituted.) For every basket made during play, a team scores two points; for every penalty shot, one point. The winning team is the one that scores the most points. The game for men lasts 40 minutes of actual playing time; for women, 36 minutes; for 15–16–year-old boys and girls, 30 minutes; and for 13–14–year-old boys and girls, 24 minutes. (The clock stops every time the referee blows his whistle.) The time is divided into two halves, with a ten-minute break. If after regulation play the teams have an equal number of points, five-minute overtimes are played until one of the teams wins.
Since 1936 men’s basketball has been an Olympic event. The Olympic championship was won by US athletes in 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, and 1968. The Soviet team took second place in the Olympics of 1952, 1956, 1960, and 1964 and first place in 1972. The first and second women’s world championships were won by the USA (Chile, 1953; and Brazil, 1957); and the third, fourth, and fifth women’s world championships were won by the USSR (USSR, 1959; Peru, 1964; and Czechoslovakia, 1967). The first men’s world championship was won by Argentina (Argentina, 1950); the second by the USA (Brazil, 1954); and third and fourth by Brazil (Chile, 1959; and Brazil, 1963); and the fifth by the USSR (Uruguay, 1967).
S. G. BASHKIN [3–69–1; updated]