"A prominent Navajo educator once told historian Peter Iverson that "the five major sports on the Navajo Nation are basketball, basketball, basketball, basketball, and rodeo." The Navajo are far from alone in their passion for the game. Whether on reservations or in cities, Native Americans of all ages tend to congregate around basketball courts. But why is this? Basketball is a relatively new sport, unconnected to older indigenous sporting traditions. It's not a sport that many Native Americans have played professionally, and most non-Natives have no idea that basketball is so widely popular in Indian Country. In Native Hoops, Wade Davies explores this central question of how and why basketball gained such importance among Native Americans. Davies argues that basketball, first introduced in Indian schools as part of an assimilationist agenda, was adopted and adapted by Native students who connected it with older tribal athletic traditions and used it as a way to build community and participate in the rise of mainstream American sports. His study spans the years from Naismith - whose early KU teams regularly played against Haskell, where Phog Allen briefly coached - to the late 1960s, at which point basketball's popularity was firmly established. The conclusion gives an overview of the years since 1970, including the rise of rez ball and the few Native people to play professionally (the most successful of whom are the Schimmel sisters). Surprisingly, this is the first historical overview of Native American basketball - while a few case studies of individual tribes and teams exist, no one has yet taken on the sport as a whole. Deeply researched and filled with long-forgotten names and games as well as famous players like Jim Thorpe, Native Hoops will appeal to all basketball fans"--