Posted on 01/25/2026 12:49:36 PM PST by kawhill
Women’s Basketball Timeline: 1800’s
1891: December: Basketball invented by Dr. James Naismith, an instructor at YMCA Training School in Springfield, MA.
13 RULES: 1. The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.
2. The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands.
3. A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowances to be made for a man who catches the ball when running if he tries to stop.
4. The ball must be held by the hands. The arms or body must not be used for holding it.
(Excerpt) Read more at womenshoopsblog.wordpress.com ...
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According to the article’s introduction, Women’s basketball deserves better. Deserves better what?
I just learned where the game “newcomb/newcome” originated.
In grade school we played newcomb on the b-ball court. I thought it was just a silly variation, but it actually follows the original b-ball rules closer than the current squeak-squeak game.
For a fascinating look at women’s basketball, check out Lydia Reeder’s “Dust Bowl Girls.” The author is the grandniece of Sam Babb, the coach who led his team of Oklahoma girls to a championship during the Depression.
LOL. I have limited time to watch sports. If I am going to watch, it would be top level athletics. And women’s basketball is not that.
I get it if a woman watches various female athletics because...she is a woman. Or a relative is competing.
And watching female ice skaters is preferable to watching predominately homosexual competition.
But I do find it amusing that women want to be paid like men in pro sports. When they can generate similar revenues, that might happen.
This is not a denigration of women. But when, for just one example, the first woman finishes 10-15 minutes behind a the first man in a marathon, the disparity is a statement of fact.
When I was a kid the girl’s game had six-player teams. Three offensive players, three defensive players. Since girls were “too delicate” to run back and forth the full length of the court, they had to stop at the midcourt line. In 1925, principals and superintendents in Iowa proposed cutting the girls sport based on the premise that basketball was too strenuous for girls.
The average height of a WNBA player in 1996 (their first year) was 6 feet.
The average height of a WNBA player now is also 6 feet.
And in 30 years of development, none of them can dunk a ball.
Pathetic!!!
Others? Meh.
”And in 30 years of development, none of them can dunk a ball.”
Slam dunking should be banned ; make them shoot .
Where are all the feminists?
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