Basketball and Ethnic Diversity

The game of basketball, which originated at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891, is arguably the most widely exported American sport form. Its national and international appeal has garnered global attention from athletes and spectators inhabiting six continents.

The global popularity of basketball is evident at the amateur and professional levels. It is estimated that well over 250 million people worldwide participate in organized competition, and countless others engage in pick-up games on a daily basis. Global network and media coverage has made it among the more marketable sports in the world. The etiology and evolution of basketball throughout the 20th century yields a unique sociocultural and historical perspective of American sport, as well as racial and ethnic relations.

Historical circumstance has played a major role in the development of American sport forms. Basketball, invented during the height of the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age (1880–1920), was no exception. The industrial workplace was the catalyst of America's growth and expanding economy during this period. Organized professional team sports and recreational pastimes grew out of this environment partly because of the diverse workforce. Because of the massive immigration from Europe, industrialists and capitalists believed that sports participation could be used to train immigrant workers to become loyal, efficient, and patriotic citizens. Therefore, team sports were employed as an assimilatory agent [Page 322]and value purveyor in hope that ethnic and cultural ties would be abandoned.

The systematic utilization of sport was basically for capitalist expansion and the status of the United States as a world power. “Americanized” sports such as football, baseball, and basketball were endorsed and sponsored. Jay Coakley's assessment of the Industrial Revolution and the development of organized American sports, particularly as an acculturation process, helps explain the playground movement in densely populated urban cities in the late 19th century. Advocates of the corporate-bureaucratic-meritocratic society promoted organized playground programs that used team sports because they could suppress the traditional values of white ethnic groups (i.e., Italians, Irish, Germans, Jews, and others) and replace them with those deemed American. The inculcated values were reinforced in public schools, adult-sponsored sport programs, and ultimately the industrial workplace. These groups were the first to play organized basketball.