Basketball cage matches: the beginning and the end

Quick! What comes to mind first when you hear the word ‘cage’?

Fine. What’s the word that comes to mind second upon hearing ‘cage’? A cage match of course. You know that sport in a cage where people try to defeat each other? How immature and childish can you get? Putting people in a cage where they compete. Are we animals? Animals belong in cages, not human beings. PETA would make an argument for otherwise, but all I’m saying is that if you really need to put someone in a cage, it would rather be animals instead of human beings.

These people are human beings. Watching them through the bars of a cage reduces both the competitors and spectators to the level of base animals. Picture a bunch of rowdy good for nothings at a cock fight, cheering on the bird they’ve got their money on. Baying for blood. That is the scene one is irresistibility reminded of when one sees these grown men locked in a cage with grown men outside cheering, stomping, clapping, hooting, hollering and in general raising all sorts of mayham with no sense of decorum.

I can’t tell you how deplorable this sport is. While all around us, science and technology and humanity and medicine are making steady progress, it’s all being thrown back into the stone ages inside these metallic bars. Decency is but forgotten here. What is the logic behind this really? Only the winner can emerge victorious from the cage. Until there is a decision regarding the contest, they are both locked in for good.

Heinous really, this sport is heinous.

What? You thought I was referring to WWE? Well everything I’ve just said applies equally to WWE and basketball as it used to be played.

“I played the first few games at Nanticoke in a [rope] cage, and I came home with the cage’s markings on me. You could play ticktacktoe on everybody after a game because the cage marked you up; sometimes you were bleeding and sometimes not. You were like a gladiator, and if you didn’t get rid of the ball, you could get killed.” – Late Joel S. (Shikey) Gotthoffer, a star for Philadelphia Sphas

The double standard with which WWE and other sports are judged is mind boggling. When some see WWE fighters competing in a cage match, they frown and shake their heads at the animalistic practice. The cage signifies bondage to them. A symbol of the beast within men. Its not a cage with user friendly plastic bars either. These are metal rods against which one can bang their head and let loose a stream of tomato sauce.

“A hard dribbler could…rush through an entire defensive team, bowling over his opponents by various means—a favorite one being that of butting the opposition [with your] head. In this particular case, the dribbler butted—but he didn’t look very carefully and butted his own man, who had stepped in the way. This man toppled backward from the ferocious charge, hit another player on his own team, and the three men fell together, knocked out by the hard impact. All three men on the same team!”- Rody Cooney, who played in the days of basketball cage matches

The rules of basketball when it was played in cages made for a lot of tough nosed play. Back when double dribble was legal. Maybe WWE cage matches don’t seem so bad in comparison now. Now that you know that basketball was played in cages too. That’s where the term cagers came to refer to basketball players. The game used to be played inside an actual cage. I like to think it was because the game would be so popular that people would be clamouring to get on the court and play and the cage was to keep the fanatics out. Actually, that was part of the reason behind it. The origin of cage matches in basketball are explained here:

Armory cage, Paterson New Jersey. Site of American Basketball Games, 1919-1933

In 1896, the first acknowledged professionals took the floor in Trenton, N.J. Their court was enclosed in a cage, a 12-foot-high wire-mesh fence set along the end-lines and sidelines, making for an impressive sight. One may have been led to believe that basketball matches in cages led to violence. Actually, it prevented violence.

“I played in cages up to 1929, when they stopped using them in Trenton. When they eliminated the cages, I never cared for basketball after that. All of the basketball players in those days enjoyed playing in a cage because there was less chance of injury than there is today. You learned to protect yourself. If you got jammed against the cage, it didn’t bother you.”- Albert Cooper Jr.

Early on, the out of bounds rule worked a little differently. The first player to fetch the ball back would win possession. This made the crowd get involved in the action too. As the players would rush after the ball to get possession, they would invariably collide with some fans. And the fans would give it back to them too – a few hits, here and there.

This, understandably, led to problems for the organizers who scratched their heads to come up with a way to avoid those collisions. Those are the injuries being referred to above. James Naismith’s original rules said that when the ball went out of bounds, the first player who got to it could throw it back in. Introduction of cages eliminated out of bounds entirely. With hilarious results as side effect as you can imagine.

“It was common practice if the man with the ball was near the net, you would grab the net on both sides of him and press him into the net so he couldn’t pass the ball and they’d have a jump ball. Otherwise, the cage didn’t make much difference in how the game was played.” - J. Emmett (Flip) Dowling, played in New York State League in 1920s

In 1913, the out of bounds rule was changed to the current rule of the team causing or touching the ball last when it goes out of bounds loses possession, leading to the first nail in the coffin of cage matches. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we could still play basketball in cages. The mind boggles at the potential possibilities for Ice Hockey style plays.

In reality, the word cage leads us to think metal bars. It was actually wire mesh. Just imagine the passes it would make possible! Rope netting, a cheaper material, soon replaced the wire mesh as the cage material of choice. Sadly/thankfully, the use of cages were abandoned almost entirely by 1933.

Act like you know now!

The quotes are from this article are from 1991. I think Nicolas Cage ought to make a movie, where he plays basketball in a cage with ballers he has beef with. Then the cage is revealed to be his rib cage, and he finds out he is hallucinating while eating ribs of beef. Endless room for Inception style plot lines here. I’d pay to see that movie, just like I’d pay to play basketball in a cage.