Donkey basketball is a variation on the standard game of basketball, played on a standard basketball court, but in which the players ride donkeys. A donkey basketball game is usually staged as a one-shot fundraising event, typically in public schools. Commercial firms provide donkeys and equipment, splitting the proceeds with the hiring party. Donkey basketball has been practiced in the United States since the 1930s.
Donkey basketball has been targeted by animal rights groups who claim that the sport is cruel to animals due to the inexperience of participants with handling the donkeys. Promoters counter that the events are supervised and the animals are treated humanely.
Famous quotes containing the words donkey and/or basketball:
“Heaven is the place where the donkey at last catches up with the carrot.”
—Anonymous.
“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)