Basketball Championship

Shortly after its creation, basketball gradually spread out of the United States and Canada and reached Europe, where it was quickly established. In 1909, the first international basketball game between Mayak of St.

Petersburg and an American team of the YMCA were held, and the first crucial European event took place in Joinville-le-Pont in 1919 during the Intermediate Games in which the Allied countries in the First World War. The United States team, led by Marty Friedman, prevailed against France in the final, and in 1928, basketball was an exhibition sport at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam.

On June 18, 1932, the International Amateur Basketball Federation (FIBA) was founded, based in Geneva. The first member countries were Argentina, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland, formerly this federation only supervised amateur teams and had a fundamental role for the inclusion of basketball in the program of the 1936 Olympic Games. In Berlin, where the games were played outdoors, on a dirt court. The United States team won the first Olympic title beating the Canadian team in the final.

The first world basketball championship was held in Argentina in 1950 and, three years later, the first women's basketball world championship took place in Santiago, Chile. Women's basketball became an Olympic event in 1976 at the Olympic Games in Montreal, thanks in particular to the work of FIBA ​​General Secretary Renato William Jones.

In the 1970s, several talented players appeared, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, NBA best scoring talent, Elvin Hayes, Moses Malone, Robert Parish, and Bernard King; likewise, in the 1980s, Hakeem Olajuwon, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Dominique Wilkins and Patrick Ewing, along with the three players who dominated the sport and contributed to the popularity of basketball throughout the world during this decade: Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and, above all, Michael Jordan, considered to be the greatest player in history. From the 1990s, some teams began to challenge the dominant position of the Lakers and the Celtics in American basketball, such as, for example, Bulls from Chicago, led by Jordan and who won six titles between 1991 and 1998; and the San Antonio Spurs, with five titles between 1999 and 2014.

The new stars emerged in the nineties were David Robinson, Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, known for his physique impressive and his jokes in the field.

The professionalization of basketball was not completed until 1990. In 1989, FIBA ​​ceased to exclude professionals from their tournaments and in 1992 professional players were able to play for the first time in the Olympic Games.

This was not an obstacle for the development of amateur sports, and it is estimated that in 2012 twenty-six million people practiced basketball in the United States, including fifteen million sporadically, about the same time, the number of players throughout the world is estimated at some one hundred million federated and more than 450 million recreational players.