Sport and Games

People all over the world are very fond of sports and games. That is one thing in which people of every nationality and class are united.
The most popular outdoor winter sports are shooting, hunting, hockey and in the countries where the weather is frosty and there is much snow-skating, skiing and tobogganing. Some people greatly enjoy figure-skating and ski-jumping.
Summer affords excellent opportunities for swimming, boating, yachting, cycling, gliding and many other sports. Among outdoor games football takes the first place in public interest. This game is played in all the countries of the world. The other favourite games in different countries are golf, tennis, cricket, volleyball, basketball and so on. Badminton is also very popular.
All the year round many people indulge in boxing, wrestling, athletics, gymnastics and track and field events. A lot of girls and women go in for callisthenics.
Among indoor games the most popular are billiards, table tennis, draughts and some others, but the great international game is chess of course. The results of chess tournaments are studied and discussed by thousands of enthusiasts in different countries.
So we may say that sport is one of the things that makes all people kin.

Basketball

The first basketball court: Springfield College
In early December 1891, Canadian Dr. James Naismith, a physical education professor and instructor at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training Schoo  in Springfield, Massachusetts was trying to keep his gym class active on a rainy day. He sought a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied and at proper levels of fitness during the long New England winters. After rejecting other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in gymnasiums, he wrote the basic rules and nailed a peach basket onto a 10-foot (3.05 m) elevated track. In contrast with modern basketball nets, this peach basket retained its bottom, and balls had to be retrieved manually after each "basket" or point scored; this proved inefficient, however, so the bottom of the basket was removed,allowing the balls to be poked out with a long dowel each time.
Basketball is a sport played by two teams of five players on a rectangular court. The objective is to shoot a ball through a hoop 18 inches  in diameter and 10 feet  high mounted to a backboard at each end. Basketball is one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports

The only essential equipment in a basketball game is the ball and the court: a flat, rectangular surface with baskets at opposite ends. Competitive levels require the use of more equipment such as clocks, score sheets, scoreboard(s), alternating possession arrows, and whistle-operated stop-clock systems.