Basketball swish rims professional#
Basketball swish rims free#

On February 4th, 1917, the New York Tribune profiled The Bushwick Five, a scrappy Brooklyn team from Bushwick High School. Fiction and Boys’ Life make basketball exciting But the word was gaining steam, with the help of the sport’s young fans. After his pioneering mention of a clear swish, there was a dry spell in print. Yarrum’s college journal story didn’t set the world on fire, however. A swish of netting resounded as the ball dropped through the goal without touching the iron rim.” Yarrum writes: “The ball described a half ellipse in mid-air and descended straight for the basket. In Trebor Yarrum’s 1913 story The Coward, he chronicled a sad-sack named Dempsey Darden who watched Moseley win a basketball game.

Basketball swish rims free#

It makes sense that fiction writers and college students would develop the word first, because they were close to the game and free to use purple prose. “A swish of netting resounded as the ball dropped…” The only issue? He was a fictional character. So who got the first recorded swish? It may have been a sophomore named Moseley in 1913. The first swisher may have been imaginary But basketball eventually got its chance. Baseball and boxing were the two biggest sports, so they received the florid copy that basketball hadn’t earned yet.

Sportswriters happily described the swish of a baseball bat (through the wind, we’d guess) or even the swish of a boxer’s glove.

Basketball swish rims professional#

Basketball lacked serious college competitions, didn’t have a professional league, and was primarily seen as a diversion. However, their swishing didn’t describe basketball, even after the 1912 debut of fabric nets. Sportswriting from the 1910s is filled with colorful phrasing and a lot of flowery language, including swishing. And it took a little longer for the term to appear in print. That’s right-basketball went almost 20 years before the first swish was ever heard. It wasn’t until 1912 that open-ended fabric nets were approved for use in recreational, high school, and college games. The nets were metal and usually closed at the end, so players had to fish out the ball after each basket. When Naismith and others began using nets and rims in 1893, they still didn’t hear the swish. As we all know, there’s no swish in a closed basket. James Naismith famously invented basketball in 1891, but it was called basket ball for a reason-peach baskets served as the hoops. But it hasn’t always been that way-there was a first swish, and it’s possible to find it. The two words are bound together, and swish manages to be both poetic and bluntly descriptive-it’s onomatopoeia that every broadcaster or writer can use. Swish and basketball have a bond that other sports envy.