Basketball is a team sport where the objective is to score points by shooting a ball through a horizontally positioned basket according to set rules. James Naismith, a Canadian educator and physician, invented basketball in 1891 at a YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts. He used a soccer ball and wooden peach baskets as the first goals. There are five standard player positions and officials such as referees that oversee the game according to the rules on the marked basketball court.