Basketball at the Olympics

Basketball first appeared in the Summer Olympics in 1936 in Berlin, and since then basketball has been continuously included in the competition program of all subsequent Olympic Games. As demonstration games were held in 1904 at the 3rd Olympics in St. Louis (USA) by basketball players from the United States.

Basketball was included in the Olympic program only after the International Amateur Basketball Federation (FIBA) was founded in 1932. The story goes that Renato William Jones, FIBA’s first Secretary General, and Karl Diem, Secretary General of the XI Olympic Committee, on board a ferry from Stockholm to Germany, agreed on the possibility of including basketball in the competition. At a plenary meeting on October 19, 1934 in Berlin the organizing committee approved the inclusion of basketball in the program of the XI Olympic Games. On February 23, 1935 the decision of the session of the International Olympic Committee in Oslo recognized basketball as an Olympic sport.

Basketball players from the US team were the first Olympic champions. In subsequent years, U.S. basketball players lost first place in the Olympics only four times: in 1972 and 1988 to the Soviet Union, in 2004 to Argentina and in 1980 they did not participate because of the boycott of the Olympics in Moscow.

Women’s basketball was included in the Olympics program by decision of the FIBA Congress in Munich at the time of the 20th Olympics. At the next Olympics in Montreal in 1976 women’s teams also participated.

In 1992, before the Olympic Games the management of the International Olympic Committee made the historic decision to allow professional players to participate in the games. Only then were NBA and WNBA players allowed to participate in the Olympics.