igh school basketball's depth of meaning to these communities.

High School of Montreal Girls Junior Basketball team, 1915–

1916
⁣ here is currently no tournament to determine a national high school champion. The most serious effort was the
T
National Interscholastic Basketball Tournament at the University of Chicago from 1917 to 1930. The event was or-
ganized by Amos Alonzo Stagg and sent invitations to state champion teams. The tournament started out as a
mostly Midwest affair but grew. In 1929 it had 29 state champions. Faced with opposition from the National
Federation of State High School Associations and North Central Association of Colleges and Schools that bore a
threat of the schools losing their accreditation the last tournament was in 1930. The organizations said they were
concerned that the tournament was being used to recruit professional players from the prep ranks. [29] The tourna-
ment did not invite minority schools or private/parochial schools.

The National Catholic Interscholastic Basketball Tournament ran from 1924 to 1941 at Loyola University.[30] The
National Catholic Invitational Basketball Tournament from 1954 to 1978 played at a series of venues, includ-
ing Catholic University, Georgetown and George Mason.[31] The National Interscholastic Basketball Tournament for
Black High Schools was held from 1929 to 1942 at Hampton Institute.[32] The National Invitational Interscholastic
Basketball Tournament was held from 1941 to 1967 starting out at Tuskegee Institute. Following a pause dur-
ing World War II it resumed at Tennessee State College in Nashville. The basis for the champion dwindled after
1954 when Brown v. Board of Education began an integration of schools. The last tournaments were held
at Alabama State College from 1964 to 1967.[33]

Professional basketball

Ad from The Liberator magazine promoting an exhibition in Harlem,

March 1922. Drawing by Hugo Gellert
Teams abounded throughout the 1920s. There were hundreds of men's professional basketball teams in towns
and cities all over the United States, and little organization of the professional game. Players jumped from team to
team and teams played in armories and smoky dance halls. Leagues came and went. Barnstorming squads such
as the Original Celtics and two all-African American teams, the New York Renaissance Five ("Rens") and the (still
existing) Harlem Globetrotters played up to two hundred games a year on their national tours.

In 1946, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) was formed. The first game was played in Toronto, Ontario,
Canada between the Toronto Huskies and New York Knickerbockers on November 1, 1946. Three seasons later,
in 1949, the BAA merged with the National Basketball League (NBL) to form the National Basketball
Association (NBA). By the 1950s, basketball had become a major college sport, thus paving the way for a growth
of interest in professional basketball. In 1959, a basketball hall of fame was founded in Springfield, Massachusetts,
site of the first game. Its rosters include the names of great players, coaches, referees and people who have con-
tributed significantly to the development of the game. The hall of fame has people who have accomplished many
goals in their career in basketball. An upstart organization, the American Basketball Association, emerged in 1967
and briefly threatened the NBA's dominance until the ABA-NBA merger in 1976. Today the NBA is the top profes-
sional basketball league in the world in terms of popularity, salaries, talent, and level of competition.

Diamond DeShields (#1) drives to the basket around Maya Moore (#23) in the Minnesota Lynx vs
Chicago Sky game
The NBA has featured many famous players, including George Mikan, the first dominating "big man"; ball-handling
wizard Bob Cousy and defensive genius Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics; charismatic center Wilt Chamberlain,
who originally played for the barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters; all-around stars Oscar Robertson and Jerry West;
more recent big men Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O'Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Karl Malone; playmak-
ers John Stockton, Isiah Thomas and Steve Nash; crowd-pleasing forwards Julius Erving and Charles Barkley; Eu-
ropean stars Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol and Tony Parker; Latin American stars Manu Ginobili, more recent super-
stars, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, etc.; and
the three players who many credit with ushering the professional game to its highest level of popularity during the
1980s and 1990s: Larry Bird, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, and Michael Jordan.

In 2001, the NBA formed a developmental league, the National Basketball Development League (later known as
the NBA D-League and then the NBA G League after a branding deal with Gatorade). As of the 2023–24 season,
the G League has 31 teams.

International basketball

The U.S. playing against Mexico at the 2014 FIBA World Cup
FIBA (International Basketball Federation) was formed in 1932 by eight founding na-
tions: Argentina, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Romania and Switzerland. At this time, the orga-
nization only oversaw amateur players. Its acronym, derived from the French Fédération Internationale de Basket-
ball Amateur, was thus "FIBA". Men's basketball was first included at the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics, although
a demonstration tournament was held in 1904. The United States defeated Canada in the first final, played out-
doors. This competition has usually been dominated by the United States, whose team has won all but three titles.
The first of these came in a controversial final game in Munich in 1972 against the Soviet Union, in which the end-
ing of the game was replayed three times until the Soviet Union finally came out on top. [34] In 1950 the first FIBA
World Championship for men, now known as the FIBA Basketball World Cup, was held in Argentina. Three years
later, the first FIBA World Championship for women, now known as the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup, was
held in Chile. Women's basketball was added to the Olympics in 1976, which were held in Montreal, Quebec,
Canada with teams such as the Soviet Union, Brazil and Australia rivaling the American squads.

In 1989, FIBA allowed professional NBA players to participate in the Olympics for the first time. Prior to the 1992
Summer Olympics, only European and South American teams were allowed to field professionals in the Olympics.
The United States' dominance continued with the introduction of the original Dream Team. In the 2004 Athens
Olympics, the United States suffered its first Olympic loss while using professional players, falling to Puerto
Rico (in a 19-point loss) and Lithuania in group games, and being eliminated in the semifinals by Argentina. It
eventually won the bronze medal defeating Lithuania, finishing behind Argentina and Italy. The Redeem Team,
won gold at the 2008 Olympics, and the B-Team, won gold at the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey de-
spite featuring no players from the 2008 squad. The United States continued its dominance as they won gold at
the 2012 Olympics, 2014 FIBA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

A EuroLeague game in Moscow in 2018

Worldwide, basketball tournaments are held for boys and girls of all age levels. The global popularity of the sport is
reflected in the nationalities represented in the NBA. Players from all six inhabited continents currently play in the
NBA. Top international players began coming into the NBA in the mid-1990s, including Croatians Dražen
Petrović and Toni Kukoč, Serbian Vlade Divac, Lithuanians Arvydas Sabonis and Šarūnas Marčiulionis, Dutch-
man Rik Smits and German Detlef Schrempf.

In the Philippines, the Philippine Basketball Association's first game was played on April 9, 1975, at the Araneta
Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines. It was founded as a "rebellion" of several teams from the now-de-
funct Manila Industrial and Commercial Athletic Ass