Basketball: The Evolution Of American Popular Culture

The History of Basketball

Basketball has been a part of American pastime throughout the many generations, but it wasn’t always loved and accepted by the American people. Throughout the many challenges that the game of basketball faced it still overcame adversity and turned into something so beautiful and successful. The evolution of American basketball can be read as a "text" to reveal the character of American popular culture during the 20th century. Through an analysis of the history of basketball, a generational "image" of the American people will be assembled. This paper will go over the ways in which popular culture, American identity, and basketball combine and reflect one another. “Basket Ball” was a big part of the Lost generation,
generation, basketball was only second tier sport and was only attended if there wasn’t a hockey game or football game. Since the attendance was so low it forced many teams, and leagues to shut down monthly, and only a select few were able to stay around, which were the New York Rens, New York Celtics, SPHA’s, and the Germans. When people thought all was lost and basketball could be the thing of the past, everything changed in 1925, when the American Basketball League was created. This league was made up of only a select few teams that were owned by small corporations like Firestone and Healey Motors and were pretty successful for the next couple years, but with the Great Depression starting most of the teams disbanded. They tried to keep the league alive while in the middle of the Great Depression, but it just wasn’t successful since Americans didn’t have the money to enjoy such luxurious things like a basketball game. The last straw was when the Stock Market Crash of 1929 eventually hit the league so hard they finally had to stop play during the seasons of 1931-32 and 1932-1933, since money was so scarce and those who had it held it
Another historic event was on March, 2 1962 when Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game over the New York Knicks and no one would ever beat this record to this day. As the NBA grew more and more with huge success as attendance was higher than it has ever been as well television ratings. With that the increase in revenue was massive especially in television and with more money coming in; problems between the owners and players started arising. This historic event would soon change the wages of professional basketball players forever. That would give rise to the Baby Boomer generation and the NBA would soon rise to the