Basketball is still a young game. In the winter of 1891, a certain college was having trouble with its boy students. The weather was so terrible that the students had to stay indoors. Since they could not enjoy their sports outside as usual, they were unhappy, and some of them often got into fights from time to time.
Finally, one of the teachers at the college, J. E. Naismith, was asked to invent a new game for the students. It was not an easy job because such a game had to be played indoors, and the court was not very large.
Naismith thought for a few days and invented a kind of ball game. It was a fast, exciting game with much moving and passing of the ball. It was played between two teams. To make score, the ball had to be thrown into a basket ten feet high above the floor on the wall. At each end of the court there was such a basket. At first, Naismith had planned to have the ball thrown into a box. As he could not find boxes of right size, he had to use fruit baskets instead. That is how the game got its name. The basketball inventor: (46) .
Basketball was invented as (47) at first.
Basketball is much (48) some of the other ball games.
(49) were fixed on the wall instead of the boxes.
To make score, basketball players must (50) into a basket.
