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| Basketball in England | |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Governing body | Basketball England |
| National team(s) | Men's national team; Women's national team |
| Representative team | Great Britain men's national basketball team |
National competitions | |
Basketball has a very long history in England, being introduced there by YMCA almost immediately after it was invented[1] (having been created by the Canadian Dr. James Naismith in 1891 in Massachusetts). World Wars I and II further spurred its popularity.
The four highest profile team sports in the United Kingdom are football, cricket, rugby union and rugby league. Basketball belongs to the next tier alongside ice hockey and netball; like these sports, it has a significant and dedicated following, a professional league, but attracts little coverage from the major British media outlets and suffers from lack of "crossover" appeal.[2] While England is the birthplace of the four main sports, and England teams are relatively major powers in each of them, Basketball, like ice hockey, is essentially an "import" from North America, and English and British teams have not generally been successful in them internationally, which also affects their profile.
The elite tier is the fully professional Super League Basketball, featuring teams from England and Scotland, while the semi-professional National Basketball League Division 1 effectively forms the second-tier. There is no promotion and relegation between the two leagues because the Super League operates a franchise system whereby teams have to "buy into" the league.[3]
- ^ Naismith, James (1 January 1941). Basketball: Its Origin and Development. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803283709 – via Google Books.
- ^ "Basketball's street cred fuels its fight to become UK's No2 sport". 18 January 2015 – via The Guardian.
- ^ "The curious case of basketball in the UK - GlobalSportsJobs". Archived from the original on 2016-09-23. Retrieved 2016-09-21.