Description: David Vyorst’s documentary The First Basket explores the impact that basketball had on modern Jewish history, as well as the profound influence that unsung Jewish pioneers had on the evolution of basketball, as it grew from a game played with ash-cans on tenement steps to the second most popular sport in the world. Though basketball was invented by Dr. James Naismith in Massachusetts, the game spread like wildfire through turn-of-the-century New York settlement houses and proved a perfect fit for urban Jewish kids. By the 1920s, basketball had become a staple of life in American Jewish culture. (Laemmle/Zeller Films)