Why is the basketball hoop 10 feet up in the air?

The basketball hoop is high and flat because its inventor wanted a game with less violence. When James Naismith designed basketball in 1891, he put the goal high above the players' heads, with its opening facing the ceiling. A goal like that can't be guarded by a crowd of bodies standing in front of it, so there is no reason to barge and tackle around it. To score, you need a soft, lobbing shot, not brute force.

Naismith had a reason to worry about brute force. At the YMCA school in Springfield, Massachusetts, he was stuck with a rowdy class kept indoors all winter, and his boss gave him 14 days to invent an indoor game that was fair and not too rough. He noticed that most injuries came from players colliding, so he also banned running with the ball.

The famous height came from the building. Naismith asked the janitor for two boxes, but the janitor came back with peach baskets. Naismith fixed them to the railing of the gym's balcony, which happened to be about 10 feet above the floor. On 21 December 1891 his class played the first game, nine against nine, with a soccer ball.

The baskets still had their bottoms, so after every goal the game stopped while the janitor climbed a ladder to fetch the ball. Metal hoops, nets and backboards only arrived in 1906, but the height stuck: the top of the hoop is still 10 feet off the ground.