I found this interesting article discussing the evolution of the game and equipment.

Via core77:

Basketball was invented because of crappy weather. In 1891 a guy named James Naismith (pictured above) was working for the Phys Ed department at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts. He needed to keep his students exercising. But it was December in New England, where freezing rain and snow make outdoor sports impractical.

While Naismith couldn’t control the weather, he did have access to an indoor gymnasium. It wasn’t the right shape or size for baseball, nor was an indoor hockey rink a possibility. He didn’t want the physical contact and potential injuries of football or rugby, nor the guarded goals of lacrosse or soccer and the contact those could engender.

His solution was to invent a sport where players could only advance the ball by throwing or slapping it to each other; running with the ball, kicking it or wrestling it out of someone’s hands was forbidden. And there would be no goaltender; instead the “goals” would be placed high up over the players’ heads to preclude contact and provide the scoring challenge.

“Running with the ball, kicking it or wrestling it out of someone’s hands was forbidden.” The game has certainly changed.

The evolution of dribbling in the sport has an interesting history as well (from part 2 of the article).

James Naismith’s original rules only allowed the ball to be passed from one player to another. At some point a “bounce pass” became allowed; this was a clever way for a player to get the ball to a teammate when the opponent’s persistent coverage made an air pass impossible.

This is where the unpredictable nature of human behavior comes in. Clever players began to “hack” the bounce pass by essentially bounce passing the ball to themselves while running. Naismith admired the ingenuity of this move, and by 1910 it was part of the game, referred to as “dribbling.”

Be sure to check out the rest of the story.