Basketball has been around for over 100 years, and while even in the last 30 years the game has undergone major changes, what’s really impressive is how much the actual team has changed since the game was first invented, particularly what so far is the hoop. has arrived.

The original basketball hoop was just a basket of peaches spiked into a 10 foot high court by Dr. James Naismith as a way to create an indoor game for his students to play when it got too cold outside during New York winters. England. This “hoop” still had the bottom of the basket and required someone to retrieve the ball (which was just a soccer ball at the time) after each goal.

Eventually the bottom of the peach basket was cut off, but the ball was still too big to go through on its own and required a long rod to be used to pull the ball out after each score, disrupting the flow of the game. , but it was still faster than having to manually retrieve the ball after each goal.

Finally, in 1906, metal hoops came into use and a backboard was introduced to prevent spectators from interfering with the game, a problem that had arisen in the past when hoops were nailed to the mezzanine balcony in any room where they were played. I was playing. in. The introduction of the backboard also changed the game by introducing rebounds.

Eventually, backboards stopped being nailed to various balconies and the vertical basketball hoops we know today were introduced. The board material has changed over the years, moving from the white plastic/fiberglass materials of the past to glass, which in turn gave way to shatter-resistant safety glass, similar to that found on the cars.

The entire rim setup has gone through numerous changes over the past 40 years, in part due to the advent of backboard-busting dunk players. In addition to the advent of shatter-resistant glass, tear-off edges were introduced which also helped reduce the safety hazard posed by the possibility of a matte destroying the backboard.

More recently, the entire basketball system was redesigned as larger players became capable of knocking down the entire system of hoops and backboards, creating a safety hazard not only for themselves, but for the players and spectators around them. The new hoops have various mechanisms to prevent them from breaking, including more pieces that can break into smaller pieces instead of bringing down the entire board.

It will be interesting to see what changes the sport continues to make to the team as technology advances. Will we one day see hoops and hoverboards that eliminate the vertical pole that can be a collision hazard? Only time will tell, but I for one look forward to finding out.