The game of basketball was initially created as an indoor activity to keep football players conditioned during the winter months after the football season was over (Sprinfield College, 2014). Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick was the superintendent of physical education at Springfield College in 1891, he charged his gym instructor Dr. James Naismith to devise a game that could be played indoors, provide a lot of exercise but was safe enough to be played indoors (Sprinfield College, 2014). As a result of this challenge, Dr. Naismith invented the amazing sport, basketball. .
Basketball was at first played with soccer like balls, and two peach baskets and thirteen rules (Sprinfield College, 2014). Dr. Naismith taught the basics of the sport to his class of eighteen, which he then divided into two teams, with each team having a total of nine players. The objective of the game was to throw the ball, or basketball, into the peach baskets which were nailed to the lower railing of the gym balcony. Each time a point was scored, the game was stopped so that the janitor could grab the ladder in order retrieve the ball from the peach basket. On March 11, 1892, in Springfield, Massachusetts, the first public basketball game was played (Blevins, 2012). The game was played on the Armory Street court with nine players against another nine players on the other team. The game became a huge success in 1892 that 'Triangle' magazine published an article about it with the title 'A New Game' (Naismith Museum). Even with all its success, there was no official name for the game so one of Dr. Naismith's student's, Frank Mahan, suggested the game be called the 'Naismith Game', but Naismith refused and decided to name it Basketball, given there was a ball and a basket (Naismith Museum). .
The first professional basketball league, the National Basketball League (NBL), was founded in 1898 (Shoals, IndianChief, Rotkirch, & Weinstein, 2010).