Basketball and Dainty Girls

The NBA is trying to work out details so the multi-million dollar players can have a season in Florida for 3 months with no family or personal assistants. Who will pick up their dirty clothes and bring them things from the kitchen? Steph Curry($40,000,000), Chris Paul($38,000,000) and Russell Westbrook($38,000,000) can't be expected to do any of that. It's a long way from Naismith's invention of the game in 1891 when he wanted an outdoor exercise and used peach baskets as the goals. Maybe at the Florida Disney complex they can get extra peach baskets for all the stars to use doing their free time. The NBA began in 1946, and many thought it would never rival football or baseball since it had already flopped in 1898 after only one year. The Florida experiment will test all the hoopla that has gone on for so long.

I played basketball in junior high. No comments about the covered wagon waiting to take me home. It, of course, was half-court, six player style with 3 forwards and 3 guards in each half of the court. You could not cross the great Equator line at mid-court. Forwards could shoot, but not guards. We could wear shorts which was a long way from the time when my sweet Aunt Faye played in Mertens in 1922 in a mid-length dress and often ripped her black silk hose. But her dad was generous and let her buy new hose when she needed them, making her the envy of the other players who had to patch theirs.

Miami Women's Basketball Team 1910

Fast forward to the first year I taught at Wilson with its remarkable students, and it was still a half-court game. Kelly was the best player and usually scored 18 or 20 points each game but could only stand and watch from her half of the court when the ball was thrown to the other end. There was always time to stand around and urge your team members at the other end to get the ball and get it back to you. In Texas girls could not play full court until 1977. Critics said it would never work because girls could not run up and down a basketball court and that there would need to be nurses and smelling salts on hand. Girls were just too fragile. Spectators waited for the hospitalizations to begin, but they never happened. Coaches taught the girls to play hard and use every inch of the court. What a grand way to watch talented girls make use of their skills like Sheryl Swoopes or Krista Kirkland or Noel Johnson or any of the Tech fantastic players in the years to come.

It was something that had always been done that way, so change wasn't necessary. Sounds like many things going on in our lives in 2020 far away from a basketball court. Maybe we can learn a lesson from those times. What we think can't be done can always be done if we plan and dream and work together.