Why the game called basketball?

Answer 1

A little research on the history of the game will bring to light the reason basketball is called basketball. James Naismith was the Canadian physical education instructor who invented basketball in 1891. James Naismith was born in Almonte, Ontario and educated at McGill University and Presbyterian Cllege in Montreal. He was the physical education teacher at McGill University (1887 to 1890) and at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts (1890 to 1895). At Springfield College (which was then the Y.M.C.A. training school), James Naismith, under the direction of American phys-ed specialist Luther Halsey Gulick, invented the indoor sport of basketball.

The first formal rules were devised in 1892. Initially, players dribbled a soccer ball up and down a court of unspecified dimensions. Points were earned by landing the ball in a peach "basket". Iron hoops and a hammock-style basket were introduced in 1893. Another decade passed, however, before the innovation of open-ended nets put an end to the practice of manually retrieving the ball from the basket each time a goal was scored.

In 1959, James Naismith was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame (called the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame.)

Answer 2

Originally, the key was narrower than it is today and had the shape of a keyhole, measuring six feet (1.8 m) wide, hence "the key", with the free throw circle as the head

Answer 3

When the game started, the net was made of waste paper baskets with holes in the bottom to allow a broom handle to poke up and get the ball back.