One of the youngest of the Olympic sports, basketball originated as a way to keep students in shape during the winter. Though it is traditionally thought of as an American Sport, basketball is actually a transplant from Canada to Springfield, Massachusetts. Dr. James Naismith invented the game while working as an instructor at a YMCA in 1890. The rules of the game changed rapidly over the first few decades of its existence, as players went from playing indoors to outdoors to indoors again, on sand to a hard surface, with baskets that had solid bottoms to bottomless nets. Today, basketball is one of the most popular sports in the world.

In an Olympic basketball game, two teams compete in four ten minute periods with a five minute overtime if the game ends in a tie after regulation time. Twelve teams compete at the Olympics – teams qualify through a championship held the year prior to the Olympics, but and the reigning World Champion and the host country who are automatically allowed to compete. The game entered the Olympics in Berlin in 1936 after demonstrations at the 1904 and 1924 Games. The United States team has taken home the gold medal at every competition except for four to date, being undefeated for the first 36 years.

In 1989, the rules changed, and FIBA, the international governing body of basketball, allowed professional players to compete in the Olympics for the first time. For the 1992 Summer Games, the United States put together the "dream team," a collection of twelve of the greatest basketball players of all time.  In 1996, the National Basketball Association (NBA) named ten of the "dream team" members to their list of the fifty greatest players in the first fifty years of the NBA's existence. The team includeded two members of the Chicago Bulls – Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.

The Bulls, Chicago’s professional team, joined the NBA for the 1966-67 season. After struggling for years, the Bulls drafted Michael Jordan in 1984 NBA Draft, a player who would go on to become known as one of the greatest players of all time. The Bulls won three consecutive NBA titles in the early 90s with Jordan and then repeated the "three-peat" a second time at the end of the decade.

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