BASKETBALL IS TRE OLYMrics

dust before the Olympied et Amsterdam, Folland, in 1928, the writer was
naned chairman of the Olumpic Basketball Comittee of the lational Basketball
Gosehes Association, and alec Chairman of the Olympic Basketball Qules Con-
mittee of the United States and Canada, and immediately began negotiations te
gain recognition for basketball in the Olympics.

This appointment came in April, 1928, and the Amsterdam Olympisd opened in
late June of the same year. Immediate ecfroulerization of the 66 various organiz~
ations holding memberships in the Amorican Olympic Association for some deron-
stration of basketball at Amsterdam left ao doubt in our minds that the hour
was late for the tnatusion of basketball fn the sperte ot Ancterdan ent tint
car requests for © place in this Clympiad would curtainly be rejected.

3 BF we guined any gremé $n thie ceunter, tt wee tn tnewing that the werd
*pasketball" hed re-echeed among the controlling powers. So we at once faced our
artillery toward the hone of the Xxth Olympied, Les Angeles, Calif., te be held in
August, 1952, with the ultiuate ain of having basketball included in the regular
Olympic sports celendars of future yoars.

We veesived nach enscnragenent fren isterantionn! figures tn foreign lente,
tut after a four-year siege, owing to lack of support from the local Los Angeles
Olympic Orgeni,ing Committee, wo failed toe get a demonstration of the sport at
Leos Angeles.

The leeal Los Angeles Olympic Committee chose to include s demonstration
game of football between their own North and South.Coast teams as the representative
American sport for their Olympiad. ‘his was perhaps a wise shoice on the part of
the Californians. Football, in the vast Olympic etedium with its 105,000 sesting
capseity end with California’s own public definitely footballeminded, fecilitated
the ticking of the turnstiles.