Basketball is one of the most culturally loaded sports in the world. And where there is culture, there is a lot of history to be told, explored and preserved. Such treasure originates from more than half a million people that practice the sport along with a huge community of fans spread out through the four continents. When it comes to sports in general, the power of exchange and connections between cultures from different places is gigantic, and this makes people from different social contexts, ethnicities and backgrounds connect building a unique crowd.
Within the basketball ecosystem, the world of sneakers, fashion and music go hand in hand, being essential factors in the historical construction of this sport!
When referring to the cultural heritage of something as big as basketball, it is necessary to take into account everything that has been built by the most diverse generations around the world, from street basketball to high performance athletes, from the legacy left by the greatest players to the passionate fans in the crowd, from the changes in the rules to the style of the game, besides, of course, all the organizational work done regionally in different countries. This motion is constant, and FIBA is the entity responsible for unifying this community, promoting and developing the sport worldwide since its foundation in 1932. Furthermore, it is the responsibility of the national federations to know how to preserve the cultural heritage of basketball, connecting and organizing all information from the past, present and everything that is under constant construction.
The FIBA Foundation connects societies to federations, preserving and promoting the values of basketball and its entire history through two different branches, the social, Basketball For Good branch and the preservation of cultural heritage. To make this organization more efficient and focused, the 'Patrick Baumann House of Basketball' was built in 2013 in the city of Mies, Switzerland, becoming the organization's current headquarters and the main historical basketball exhibition space.
Serving as the cultural and historical heart of FIBA, the branch called 'Cultural Heritage' has as its main strategic objectives the following:
- Manage and expand FIBA's collections;
- Disseminate and increase the visibility of basketball's rich cultural heritage to the largest possible audiences;
- Increase the importance and reputation of the FIBA HALL OF FAME and use inductees as icons of basketball's history along with their values;
- Enable National Federations to preserve and share their cultural assets;
- Establish a network of international sporting institutions dealing with heritage to exchange knowledge and share content.
Considering these objectives in line with preservation, research, promotion and cultural education, this unit organizes them through projects and initiatives such as the Pedro Ferrándiz Library, a historical archive of competitions, multimedia historical library, collections, cultural projects, museums, collectors, and historians of basketball, plus the Naismith Arena, an exhibition space for collectible items.
Currently, there are over 800 magazines and 9,000 books in 30 different languages from more than 80 countries in the Pedro Ferrándiz Library, named in honor of former Spanish coach and member of the Hall of Fame. Among the collection's treasured items is the classic 1900's 'Official Basketball Rules', which organized the rules nine years after Naismith's invention of the game.
FIBA constantly receives various items from collectors, federations and people who also believe in the work of preserving the cultural heritage of basketball, in addition, the organization also purchases historically relevant items.
Miguel Font, currently responsible for FIBA's historical curatorship, believes that basketball's cultural heritage is not lost, but instead it changes over time, connecting past, present and future. In his own words he said:
¨In my opinion it is the obligation of FIBA to search, rescue and keep as many basketball items related to basketball's cultural heritage as possible. For instance, we have found the original poster of the IV European Basketball Championship held in 1946. But it is also FIBA's role to understand its history and know that it is a silk-printed lithograph signed by the famous Noel Fontanet, born in 1898, the most successful artist of the Geneva school of graphic designers. To achieve this, you need time, a little luck, some money, a lot of curiosity and commitment.
FIBA's role is to extract the soul of the poster and share it. The soul of this poster talks about the post-war years, the encounter on basketball court of countries that in the past fought on the battlefield. The poster could be shown in an art gallery, included in a design exhibition, a valuable piece in a second world war or a EuroBasket exposition, a replica would be a perfect gift for many federations that participated in the event.
We can only transmit this feeling spending many hours reading, studying, being in love with the history of this sport and having a lot of passion for what we are doing, with a deep conviction that the objects are only an excuse to tell stories, the stories of those who made this game so great...¨
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