Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years

by Robert W. Peterson

Robert Peterson has emerged as one of America's finest writers on sports history. His groundbreaking book Only the Ball Was White won wide acclaim as a compelling account of baseball's Negro leagues in the days before Jackie Robinson. Now comes Cages to Jump Shots , an insightful and
entertaining look at early professional basketball from the birth of the sport through the first years of the NBA.
In Cages to Jump Shots , Peterson paints a vibrant portrait of how this sport gained its place in American life. He traces the game from the day in 1891 when the father of basketball, James Naismith, drew up the first rules, through the early barnstorming professional teams playing in gaslit
social halls, to the advent of NBA games in Madison Square Garden. His richly detailed account brings to life every aspect of the changing game and the society that grew to love the players, the fans, the owners, the officials, the rules, techniques, and equipment. Peterson draws on interviews
with old playes to recreate the experience of this dramatically evolving sport, as it went from a brutal, slow-moving game (with a sewn leather ball, underhand set shots, center jumps after every score, and a wire or rope cage around the court) to the high-scoring contests that emerged in the 1950s,
with the start of the team foul limit and the 24-second shot clock. Along the way, he illuminates the impact of a changing society, such as the YMCA's early hopes that basketball would foster Christian values, the indignities suffered by black teams in a segregated society, and the influx of Jewish
players during the Depression. Peterson brings the story up through the founding of the NBA and its final success in overtaking the popularity of college basketball.
Cages to Jump Shots offers a unique and vivid look at a fascinating side of American life. Whether capturing the flavor of the rough-and-tumble early games, discussing the career of the Harlem Globetrotters, or tracing the origins of today's big teams, Peterson lends a lively and perceptive voice
to the story of America's most popular sport.

Genres: Basketball, Sports, History

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 1990

Reviews

[Dan]

Really incredible resource for the absolute earliest history of basketball, from its invention at the Y to the early barnstorming pros, and accessible enough that you'll have no problem following along even if you've never seen a minute of play before 1984.

The story of early basketball is the development of the sport we know now, but also the closing-off of a bunch of other less-successful routes it could have gone. I kept getting distracted by thinking about how fun it would be to have modern players and teams optimize for older rules, like the center tip after every made basket or the cage that made the ball permanently in-bounds, etc.

Also fascinating to see the flipped reputations of "college basketball" and "pro basketball" in the late 20s and early 30s. College ball was wide-open, with passing and talent and team play. Pro basketball took place in cages, and you could back your man into the basket double-dribbling all the way, and the floor had zero space.

[Grace Cooper]

My great granduncle Fred Cooper, is the young man on the bottom left of this book cover. He was the 1st professionally paid basketball player in the late 1890s in Trenton NJ.

[Chris Zull]

I found this book to be full of fascinating information but very drily written.

[Roland]

Fantastic history of professional basketball before the shot clock era. The game was created with the idea of no contact being allowed due to the roughness in football and rugby, yet early players sometimes had to wear pads because of all the wrestling and contact during these games. Very little info about the college game, which is great because other histories seem to focus on that aspect of the game almost exclusively. If you're a basketball historian, this book is a must.