Basketball

Basketball began in December 1891, when Canadian physical educator James Naismith, teaching at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, was asked to invent an indoor game to keep students active during winter. He nailed two peach baskets to the gymnasium balcony and improvised 13 rules -- and for that first game, the ball used was simply a soccer ball, since no purpose-built basketball yet existed.

As the game spread through YMCAs and colleges, manufacturers began producing dedicated balls, and open-bottomed hoops replaced the peach baskets so the ball no longer had to be fished out after every score. The panelled leather ball that emerged over the following decades set the template -- roughly spherical, hand-stitched, and sized for a grown man's grip -- that today's Size 7 ball still follows.

Both the NBA and FIBA use a men's Size 7 ball with the same 22-ounce (624g) weight, but their circumference tolerances differ: the NBA specifies a tighter 29.5-inch standard, while FIBA permits a broader range up to roughly 30.7 inches for international competition. In practice, the two organizations' balls are close in feel, but the panel construction and cover material differ -- NBA balls have historically used a specific leather or composite-leather design from a single supplier, while FIBA-sanctioned balls are produced by multiple approved manufacturers to a shared but looser spec.

This split reflects a broader pattern in international sport: a single domestic league can lock down an exact-tolerance ball tied to one manufacturer, while a global federation overseeing hundreds of national bodies needs enough tolerance for multiple approved suppliers to compete.