How Did Basketball Come to Rule?
There are many reasons why basketball has become so pervasive. Perhaps the most common reason is sheer laziness. Adult leaders don’t have to plan basketball. You don’t have to go anywhere or bring anything or set anything up. It doesn’t take very large teams of a fixed size — in fact, you can play some kind of game with only a couple of guys, and even one guy alone can shoot at the hoop. Nor does it take any training to get a game started — every American male has played enough basketball or variant games like “horse” to be able to pretend to be a leader. Most important, there’s always a large — or at least vocal — contingent of young men who want only to play basketball when they come to church, and regard any other activity as a waste of time, an irksome duty they have to perform before being allowed to play. So when a youth leader says, “Nothing planned tonight, guys. Just a little roundball,” he is likely to be greeted with cheers. The boys who hate such nights either quietly g
