Basketball is for everybody and makes no distinction of age, race, creed or gender. It is a great game but if you are planning on organizing a competition falling in the category of either amateur or semi-professional in a local or school setting, then you are going to need a few things aside from the teams, the basketballs and the area to play with. One item of importance for consideration is the basketball hoops.
One of the most prominent features of the hoop has always been the size and shape of the backboards. In the professional basketball arena, they are usually rectangular. There are also oval shaped varieties, mostly seen in residential or playground basketball hoops. One attribute that is not as well-known is that most hoops nowadays are made of Plexiglas or acrylic, a known alternative to ordinary glass. This component is highly important because acrylics are quite light and shatter-proof.
Backboards before have notoriously shattered once sufficient force or impact were applied to it, say, from a slam dunk. Back in the late 1970s, breakaway rims have been introduced. Invented by a grain elevator, Arthur Ehrat, at the behest of an assistant coach from Saint Louis University (who happens to be his nephew), breakaway rims could bend and spring back after about 125 pounds of force were applied to it. By 1982, he was awarded a patent for his invention.
Since there are numerable factors affecting basketball balls in flight at any given time, the net joined to the hoop was pioneered. Variables like velocity, angle and momentum are somewhat reduced and channeled elsewhere to stabilize the resultant movement of the balls. This action is caused by friction facilitated by the nylon or chain link that makes up the net.
Basketball, my dear friends, is so much more than it actually appears.