History of Basketball

Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian physical education teacher who worked at the YMCA College in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was looking for a way to keep students occupied indoors in the winter and came up with a game with a ball and two fruit baskets nailed to the walls 10 feet (about 3 metres) high. The first rules included 13 points, including the prohibition of running with the ball (only passing or throwing). The game quickly spread across the United States, and in 1893 it reached Europe.

In 1932, the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) was established, and in 1936, basketball made its debut at the Olympic Games in Berlin. In the United States, the NBA, a professional league, was established in 1946 (originally as the BAA), bringing together the best players and making the game a mass phenomenon. Stars such as Michael Jordan in the 1980s and 1990s took basketball to a global level, and modern broadcasting technology has made it available everywhere from Germany to Asia.

Fantasy sports originated in the United States in the mid-20th century, and its roots are connected to baseball. In 1962, journalist Daniel Okrent created the first fantasy league, Rotisserie Baseball, where participants formed teams of real players and competed on statistics. The idea was to allow fans to feel like managers by analyzing the performances of athletes.

Fantasy basketball appeared later, in the 1980s, when the NBA became popular and player statistics were easily accessible through newspapers and television. The first leagues were offline, with participants manually scoring points for rebounds, assists, or shots. With the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, fantasy basketball moved online, with platforms like ESPN and Yahoo automating scoring and adding interactivity. In the 2000s, the game became massive, reaching millions of players around the world, including Germany, where fans began to draft teams from NBA stars and local leagues.

Today, fantasy basketball is a global community where you select players, manage your team, and compete in real time. From paper charts to apps on your phone, it has evolved but retained its essence: a combination of knowledge, strategy, and love of basketball.