Basketball at the 1936 Summer Olympics was the first appearance of the sport as an official medal event. The tournament was played between 7 August and 14 August 1936 in Berlin, Germany. 23 nations entered the competition, making basketball the largest tournament of the team sports.
The International Basketball Federation, which is the governing body of international basketball, used the 1936 tournament to experiment with outdoor basketball. Lawn tennis courts were used for the competition. This caused problems when the weather was adverse, especially during the final game.
The medals were awarded by James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. All went to North American teams.
Read more about Basketball At The 1936 Summer Olympics: Medallists, Participating Nations, Summary
Famous quotes containing the words basketball and/or summer:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)
“I swear,
I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-à-brac
of summer loves, I know
you not.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)