The sport of basketball was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA by Dr. James Naismith in 1891. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Naismith teamed up with the International YMCA Training School in sending Christian missionaries to China. (The former International YMCA Training School was where Naismith taught physical education. Later, it changed its name, known today as Springfield College.) Basketball spread in China as some of Naismith’s original players even ended up showcasing the sport. It became the second major country (and Asia the second major continent) to represent basketball in its earliest form.

Dr. David Willard Lyon(来会理), an American missionary, was one of the first directors of a YMCA in China; he founded the Tientsin YMCA (today known as Tiajin).To add, Lyon officiated the first basketball game in China on December 5, 1895 (although some earlier sources say that it was the 11th). The game was played with one team from the Tiajin YMCA — the Nankai (名扬天下) Five Tigers.

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In 1910 in the city of Nanking, some Americans with the YMCA put together China’s first athletic competition, which featured several sports including basketball. Three years later, these same people organized the Far Eastern Championship Games held in Manila, Phillipines. After the games were held in Shanghai, China in 1915, most leaders noted the unity in which the games brought to China.

China went on to upset the Filipino team, 30-27, in 1921 to win its first ever gold medal in basketball. Sun Li-Jen (孫立人), who later graduated from Purdue University, led the squad to victory. Also known as Sun Chung-neng (孫仲能, Sūn Zhòngnéng), he was a leader off the court as well. Sun was a general in the 2nd Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War and even earned the nickname, “Rommel of the East.”
Sun attended Tsing Hua (Qinghua) Imperial College before Purdue, where he would excel on the court and become noticed as a star.

St. John’s University (Shanghai) went on to represent China and win the national championship and even win a silver medal in 1923 at the Far East Games. The civil war between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party in China slowed down the competition until 1935, when China declared basketball as a “national past-time. It sent its first basketball team to the (Berlin) Olympics only a year later. Unfortunately, they finished with a 1-3 record. Later, both the Nationalists and the Communists would go on to ban influences from the Western Hemisphere and Western culture but the sport of basketball remained strong.

During the rule of Communist leader Mao Zedong, China embraced basketball. The slogan “Friendship first and competition second” was used to the extent that after a player committed a foul, he or she would apologize to the other player. Under the Mao era, government scouts searched China for tall kids who had tall parents. They would be placed in after-school programs and even put in full-time sports academies if the players showed promise on the court.

In June 1956, the Chinese Basketball Association, a non-governmental agency at a national level, was established. Due to hard economic times, the CBA was pulled out of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) but reinstated in 1974. China’s national basketball team did not do well with the floundering economy. In the previous two decades, it picked up once again as the economy did. In the past 3 of the 4 Olympic games, China finished near the top of the division.

Many Chinese stars would rise to the ranks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) including: Mengke Bateer, Wang Zhizhi, Yi Jianlian, Yao Ming, and Sun Yue.