January 20th is Basketball Day

If you're looking for something to do today then take aim at some hoops because it's Basketball Day!

Didn't you know that today is the official birthday of basketball?

Let's get right into celebrating Basketball Day!

Why is this a holiday?

Well if you go back to 1891 and head on over to the Young Men's Christian Association Training School (AKA YMCA) in Springfield, Massachusetts then you might come across a Canadian man named Dr. James Naismith.

You see, Dr. Naismith was trying to find a way to keep students in his gym class active on rainy days and all through the winter. So he came up with some rules and nailed a peach basket 10 feet up in the air. Some of his rules might have actually came from a children's game called "Duck on a Rock", weird huh?

The only problem with the peach basket was that you had to get up there and take the ball out every time you made a shot. So they removed the bottom so that you could poke the ball with a stick to get it out.

A year later, on this exact day, the first official basketball game was played with nine players. It wasn't a high-scoring game though; it ended at 1-0, the only shot being made from 25 feet away.

It wasn't until 1906 that they actually started using metal hoops with backboards. Normally they would nail the basket to the balcony of the court, but people who were watching the game started to interfere with the shots. So they added a backboard to put an end to the interference and in turn it created a new thing called rebounds!

This game had a very interesting start and soon became quite popular. It spread from high schools to colleges and eventually a professional league was born. We are now lucky enough to have this fun game readily available to us through random basketball courts that seem to pop up in each and every city.

So how can you celebrate today?

Well, if it's nice outside then get some friends together and head on over to an outdoor court. If it's too cold then find an indoor basketball court that you can use!

Play a little one on one, maybe some half court or even full court basketball if you have enough people. Or you could play a good old fashioned game of HORSE if you like. You can't go wrong with HORSE ;).

But hey, maybe you don't feel like being all that active today. You could always watch a basketball game on TV! I'm sure there's a good game on tonight at some point.

And if you're a gamer you could always pop in your favorite basketball game and have a friendly competition with your friends today. Have a little tournament and see who reigns supreme with the game controller. If you're true ballers, the winner gets two tickets to a local basketball game ;).

Or if you have kids, maybe you could buy them their very first basketball today.  It'd be the perfect day to introduce them to the game!

It doesn't matter what you decide to do today, just make sure that someone's ballin'!