Basketball Tactics Strategy

What we verified before publishing

Fact-check status: passed

The following claims were verified through Perplexity Sonar before the questions were finalised. The host can reference any of them during play:

• Basketball was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian-American physical educator at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• The first game of basketball was played on December 21, 1891, using two half-bushel peach baskets as goals, which gave the sport its name.
• The first official game with nine players was held on January 20, 1892, in the YMCA gymnasium in Albany, New York.
• By 1897–1898, teams of five players became the standard size in basketball.
• In standard basketball, a field goal is worth two points unless made from behind the three-point line, in which case it is worth three.
• The team with the most points at the end of the game wins; if regulation play ends with a tied score, most leagues mandate overtime periods until the score is no longer tied.
• The position of 'point guard' (often called the '1') is usually occupied by the fastest player on the team, who organizes the offense by controlling the ball.
• The two main defensive strategies in basketball are 'zone defense,' where players guard specific court areas, and 'man-to-man defense,' where each player guards a specific opponent.
• A 'cut' is a quick movement by an offensive player without the ball to gain an advantageous position, while a 'screen' or 'pick' is a legal attempt to stop a defender from guarding a teammate.
• Basketball was first included in the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, with the United States winning the first Olympic title.
• In 1954, the 24-second shot clock was introduced to increase game speed by forcing teams to shoot before the timer expires.
• The NBA introduced the three-point line in the 1979–1980 season to spread out players and add difficulty to the game.