History
The association was founded in Geneva in 1932, two years after the sport was officially recognized by the IOC. Its original name was Fédération Internationale de Basketball Amateur. Eight nations were founding members: Argentina, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland. During the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, the Federation named James Naismith (1861–1939), the founder of basketball, as its Honorary President.
FIBA has organized a World Championship, now known as World Cup, for men since 1950 and a World Championship for Women since 1953. Through 2014, both events are now held every four years, alternating with the Olympics. As noted above, the World Cup will be moved to a new four-year cycle, with tournaments in the year before the Summer Olympics, after 2014.
In 1989, FIBA opened the door to Olympic participation by professionals such as players from the NBA in the United States. At this point, the Fédération Internationale de Basketball Amateur became the Fédération Internationale de Basketball, but retained FIBA as an abbreviation.
The Federation headquarters moved to Munich in 1956, then returned to Geneva in 2002. Patrick Baumann is the Secretary General of FIBA.
In 1991 it founded FIBA Hall of Fame, the first induction ceremony was held on 12 September 2007 during EuroBasket 2007.
Read more about this topic: International Basketball Federation
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)