History of Basketball

A. The NBA features minimal violence compared to the other major national sports.

II. Body: The history of the NBA began in 1949 with eight teams in two divisions. In 1998, there are thirty-two teams in four divisions, with the two conference winners meeting for the championship in June.

A. The rules of the NBA have developed over the years and are established today, with occasional adjustments and additions, including the 24-second clock, the 3-point shot, the flagrant foul, the outlawing of zone defenses, the falling-out-of-bounds time-out rule, and the widening of the lanes.

B. Major stars have dominated play since 1949, although some early stars are not as remembered by today's fans as they should be. What marks the career of a superstar, more often than not, is his ability to lead a finely-tuned team to the championship, rather than merely exhibit his individual talent.

III. Conclusion: The 1998 playoffs are important because they may spell the end of the Chicago Bull dynasty. The Los Angeles Lakers probably offer the Bulls the greatest challenge, although both teams must win two more series to reach the finals in June.

The National Basketball Association has its origins, like all organized basketball, in the 1891 concept of Dr. James Naismith, who used two peach baskets and thirteen rules to create the g

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gainst a superior opponent. One of the most recent rules shows the subtlety of rule changes: no longer can a player falling or jumping out of bounds signal a time-out in mid-air. The flagrant foul, another fairly recent addition, penalizes an excessively rough foul by giving the fouled player two free throws and giving his team the ball out of bounds. Aside from the 3-point line, which itself has been extended to make the shot more difficult, the dimensions of the court has remained the same, most importantly the 50-by-94 feet size of the court overall (Miller 40), and the height of the basket, which is ten feet. One change was included to hamper an individual player from unfair domination of the lanes under the baskets, extending from the baseline to the free-throw line. As Harris writes, "When the 7-foot-1 [Wilt] Chamberlain came along to rewrite all the NBA scoring records, the league reacted . . . by widening the area to its present size" (Harris 10), which is sixteen feet across rather than the previous twelve. The major stars of the game at the end of the century are well-known to the country if not the world, just as the major stars of the other sports are well-known at least to the fans of the sport. A major difference
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