The ENTIRE History of Basketball

In December 1891, in a cold gym in Springfield, Massachusetts, a Canadian teacher nailed a peach basket to a balcony rail and gave eighteen bored young men a new game. Today that game is played by hundreds of millions of people, and its best players earn more than 50 million dollars a year. This film follows basketball from James Naismith's thirteen rules and a first game that ended 1–0 to the modern arena. It asks how a game invented in about two weeks conquered the world, and how it got through the cheaters, the gamblers and the dull years that nearly killed it. Along the way: the dribble, the backboard and the open net, Senda Berenson's rules for women, the first five-on-five college game, the cages of early pro ball, the all-Black New York Renaissance and their 88 straight wins, the muddy Olympic final of 1936, and the NBA with its shot clock. Each time something broke, basketball changed the rules and kept playing. The film ends where it began, with a rim still ten feet off the floor.