Wild Facts About American Basketball

Basketball was born in 1891 out of an idea from James Naismith, a PE teacher who wanted to keep his students moving through the winter. The hoop sits 3.05 metres off the ground and the goal is to put the ball through it: the original rules were few and very different from today's.

From there the sport became one of the most followed in the world, with the NBA as its main showcase and FIBA governing the game internationally. But behind the games you watch there are plenty of stories almost nobody knows.

20 facts about American basketball

1. The first basketball was a soccer ball stuffed with rags.
2. The first hoop was a wicker basket hung from a balcony, and you needed a ladder to get the ball back.
3. The first official game was played on 21 December 1891 at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. It finished 1-0.
4. Basketball entered the Olympic programme at the 1936 Berlin Games.
5. The record for points scored by a single player in an NBA game is 100 points, set by Wilt Chamberlain on 2 March 1962 against the New York Knicks.
6. The longest basketball game ever played lasted more than 8 hours, in a non-professional charity match.
7. The NBA is the most followed professional league in the world, but it isn't the oldest: it was founded in 1946 as the BAA and took its current name in 1949.
8. Wilt Chamberlain never committed an unsportsmanlike foul in his entire career.
9. Michael Jordan won Finals MVP in all six NBA Finals he played: six out of six, and nobody has done it since.
10. The "phantom player" is a locker-room urban legend: the story goes that he shows up at the free-throw line and makes you miss. He doesn't exist, but fans have been joking about him for decades.
11. The technical foul exists to punish unsportsmanlike behaviour and deliberate stoppages of play, and over the years it has been progressively tightened.
12. Nicknames in basketball are a genre of their own: Kobe Bryant was "The Black Mamba", Shaquille O'Neal "The Diesel", LeBron James "The King".
13. Basketballs used to be leather; today most of them are made of synthetic materials or composite leather, which hold up better against wear and moisture.
14. The Boston Celtics hold the record for NBA titles, reaching 18 with their 2024 win.
15. The dunk is the most iconic move in the sport, and also the most demanding athletically: it means getting your hand above the rim, at 3.05 m.
16. The ABA (American Basketball Association) was founded in 1967 as a rival league to the NBA and brought in innovations that stuck around, first among them the three-point line. The two leagues merged in 1976.
17. The three-point shot only officially arrived in the NBA in the 1979-80 season, more than ten years after its ABA debut.
18. Basketball has been an Olympic sport since 1936, and since 2021 3x3 has had its own separate Olympic tournament.
19. Several players have played at a high level late into their careers: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired at 42, Vince Carter at 43, after 22 NBA seasons.
20. The "two-point game" is another bar-stool legend: the story goes that both teams scored only two points. There's no trace of it in the archives, but the story keeps going around.

One thing runs through almost all these stories: the jump

The hoop is at 3.05 metres and it doesn't come down. Chamberlain, Jordan, Carter: what made them memorable is in large part how high they got off the floor and how long they stayed up there.

How high do you jump?

With the JHP jump test you find out in two minutes, free: you upload a two-second video of yourself jumping and you get your vertical in centimetres, worked out from your hang time. The video never leaves your phone.

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Then train it

The JHP subscription gives you 13 programs with day-by-day plans, a video for every exercise and WhatsApp support, at €99/year. If you play basketball:

• Jump Higher Program — 10 weeks of bodyweight jump training, no equipment (€60)
• JHP Gym Edition — 16 weeks in the weight room (€60)
• Basket Advanced — the package built for basketball players (€80)

You might also like: how high NBA players jump and the fundamentals of basketball.