1. Keith Woods
Mrs. Corbett
Senior Project
Evolution of Basketball
“Time waits for no man.” This saying could not be closer to the truth. Time
continues on and on, no matter what anyone wants to happen. Because of the passage of
time, things grow and evolve. Time seems to change everything, which contributes to the
wonderment of those who happen to stumble upon a situation unchanged by the passing
of time, such as the Amish. Basketball shows this rule to be true. Since its inception,
basketball has continued to evolve and change, moving from a little know sport born in
the nothingness of Midwest America, to a worldwide sport played by all manners of
people and groups.
Basketball today has become a sport that cannot be confined by the borders of
America from whence it began. It has grown exponentially and is now loved by kids
from Spain to China. However, to truly appreciate the manner in which the game of
basketball ball has spread, one must trace it all the way back to its humble beginnings.
Basketball was created by an individual named James Naismith at a YMCA located in
Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith had not been looking his whole life for some genius
game to invent, but rather was simply trying to invent a game to occupy students during
the colder months when it was too cold for outside sports. No primary “inventor” can be
observed for sports such as soccer or football, for these two sports evolved from other

2. games. However, Naismith can truly be credited for the invention of basketball since it
was created almost entirely by him (“Naismith”). While some things stayed the same
between the game Naismith originally created and the game that we observe around the
world today, one would be hard pressed to recognize the original game of basketball that
did not include dribbling, or dunks, both additions that would come later (“Basketball”).
The sport grew greatly and was soon being played across the country. Many colleges and
universities started to sponsor basketball teams and ever since then, the game of
basketball has become ingrained in the American conscience (“Naismith”). Now
basketball has become a lucrative business venture and as any venture involving large
sums of money, has become analyzed in-depth and the ways of reviewing basketball
performance have evolved.
The past decade has been one ripe in basketball innovation. Today there are new
ways of viewing the game popping up all over the world. No longer are simply the same
old statistics used in order to examine the game of basketball (“Basketball”).
Mathematics are useful in the world of analytics. Many individuals are going to use
numbers in order to quantify everything that they possibly can, no matter what this might
be. Sometime in the future we might be using numbers to quantify something as
seemingly unimportant as the average number of breaths a basketball player takes while
he plays during a span of five minutes. However, since there is so much to analyze that
actually involves the game of basketball, we will leave that arbitrary quantification up
future generations. Today’s statistics are starting to become more in-depth by the minute,
each new statistic that comes out is seemingly more useful than the previous, not to
mention the formula is much longer and complicated. Per game statistics have become

3. over shadowed by the importance of per minute statistics. This is the main part of the
statistical revolution. By realizing the importance of per minute statistics over the
importance of per game statistics, basketball analysts have noticed that people would
have to shift their way of thinking if they were going to be able to keep up during this
tremendous output of basketball knowledge. Now statistics are available to quantify the
rate at which someone produces shots for their teammates and not just for themselves.
John Hollinger created an overall statistic called the Player Efficiency Rating that is
widely thought to be the most accurate measure of any player that plays in the NBA. It
does its best to incorporate every aspect of the game in its evaluation of players.
However, it cannot achieve this because it does not incorporate a way to judge a player’s
defensive capabilities. The Hall of Fame guard Bruce Bowen consistently ended up with
a Player Efficiency Rating below league average.
A large part of the statistical revolution, to come up with a statistic that tells
someone exactly how good a certain player is. Everyone is interested in looking at
statistics that tells us exactly how a player affects the game of basketball when he takes
the court. Maybe one day there will be one end all statistic that perfectly quantifies the
true worth of any one player. However, until then, the basketball community has more
than enough to sit back and ponder, while continuing their further innovation in putting
together the worlds of sports and mathematics.

4. Works Cited
"Basketball."Student Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Discovering
Collection. Gale. Creekview High School. 16 Apr. 2012
<http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&source=gale&srcprod=DISC&userGroup
Name=cant48040&prodId=DC&tabID=T001&docId=EJ2181500002&type=retrieve&co
ntentSet=GSRC&version=1.0>.
“Naismith, James (1861-1939)." Encyclopedia of World Biography.Ed. Jennifer
Mossman.Vol. 21. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Discovering Collection. Gale.
Creekview High School. 16 Apr. 2012
<http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&source=gale&srcprod=DISC&userGroup
Name=cant48040&prodId=DC&tabID=T001&docId=EK1631007799&type=retrieve&c
ontentSet=GBRC&version=1.0>.