Development from the Basketball Hoop

Basketball has been around for more than 100 years, and while even within the past 30 years the game has been through major changes, what's really impressive is how much the actual equipment has changed since the game was invented, in particular how far the hoop has come.

The original indoor basketball hoop was merely a peach basket nailed to a 10 foot high track by Dr. James Naismith as an easy way to generate an indoor game for his students to play when it absolutely was too cold outside through the New England winters. This "hoop" still had the underside to the basket and required that somebody retrieve the ball (which was just a baseball ball at the time) after every score.

Eventually the underside of the peach basket was cut fully out, but the ball was still too big to just pass through on its own and required a lengthy dowel rod be utilized to pop the ball out after every score, which split up the flow of the game, but was still faster than needing to manually retrieve the ball after every score.

Eventually in 1906 metal hoops started to be utilized and a backboard was introduced to avoid spectators from interfering in the game, a problem that had arisen before once the hoops were just nailed to the mezzanine level balcony in whatever hall the game had been played in. The introduction of the backboard also changed the game as it introduced rebounds.

Eventually the backboards were moved from being nailed to various balconies and the upright basketball hoops that we know today were introduced. The backboard material itself has changed over time, moving from the white plastic/fiberglass materials of the past to glass, which in turn gave way to shatter-resistant safety glass not unlike what's present in cars.

The whole hoop setup experienced numerous changes within the last few 40 years, simply because of the advent of players destroying backboards with dunks. In addition to the advent of shatter-resistant glass, tear-away rims were introduced that also helped reduce the safety hazard presented by the prospect of a slam dunk to destroy the backboard.

Now, the entire basketball system was redesigned when larger players became capable of tearing down the entire hoop and backboard system, creating a safety hazard no simply to themselves, but to the players and spectators around them. The brand new hoops have several mechanisms in position to avoid them from being torn down, including more pieces that will just tear away in smaller pieces as opposed to bringing the entire backboard down.

It will soon be interesting to see what changes the game continues to produce to the gear as technology advances. Will we 1 day see floating hoops and backboards that eliminate the upright post that can be quite a collision hazard? Only time will tell, but I for starters anticipate finding out.