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Basketball has been played in the UK for nearly 130 years.

The sport was first introduced in England in 1892, by the president of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Birkenhead, CJ Proctor. CJ had recently visited Canada where the game had just been invented one year earlier.

The inventor of basketball was a guy called Dr James Naismith, a Canadian PE teacher. He came up with the sport to keep his students from becoming bored during the winter when it gets too cold to play outside in Canada.

Naismith wrote the basic rules and then nailed a fruit basket onto a 10-foot-tall pole.

Unlike modern basketball hoops, the bottom of the fruit basket was still there, so after a point was scored, somebody had to get the ball out of the basket with a long stick. Over time, people made a hole at the bottom of the basket, so the ball could fall through more easily.

Back in the UK, as the years went on, lots of young men started to play the sport, up until 1914 when World War I started. The war meant a large number of men left their home towns for France, so fewer people were participating in the sport in the UK.

When America joined the War in 1917, many British basketball players found out more about the game. After the war, its popularity grew again and in 1924, basketball was included as a demonstration game at the Paris Olympic Games.

Great Britain was represented in the tournament by a team from a YMCA in London - and won all of their games. Following that tournament, basketball maintained its popularity and was played by soldiers again a few years later, this time in World War II.

Like during World War I, the arrival of American soldiers in 1943 gave the sport a boost and a popularity that continues to this day in Britain.

Do you play basketball or would you like to? What do you think of the sport? Let us know in the comments below!