Throughout gyms, parks, and driveways around the world, basketball hoops are almost always 10 feet (3 meters) off the ground. Some leagues for young children play on shorter hoops, but from junior high schools through the professional leagues, the game is played on hoops of the standard 10-foot height. The reason why is surprisingly simple: when James Naismith invented the sport in 1891, he hung the peach baskets that served as the first hoops on the railing of the running track at the YMCA gym in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the railing was 10 feet off the ground.
(Read James Naismith's 1929 Britannica essay on his invention of basketball.)
Naismith’s impromptu decision to mount the baskets on the railing is one of the few features of the first game to last to the present day. Originally, the game was played with nine people per side (as opposed to the modern five); they used a soccer ball—as the basketball had not, of course, yet been invented—and the players were not allowed to dribble the ball but instead had to be stationary when in possession of it. However, the goal remained 10 feet off the ground, even after the inconvenient peach baskets (which required a ladder to retrieve the ball when a shot was successful) were replaced with iron hoops. As the game—and players—grew over the years, there occasionally were calls to raise the height of the hoops at more-advanced levels of play in order to make hitting a shot more difficult. The average height of a National Basketball Association (NBA) player in 1947 was just 6 feet 2 inches, while in 2015 the average height was just under 6 feet 7 inches. This increase in height—combined with better training and an overall increase in athletic talent over the years—created the high-flying above-the-rim game that modern NBA fans cannot get enough of. So while technically the game is easier for today’s players, it’s doubtful that there will be any serious effort to change the height of the hoops, given the beautiful play of the modern basketball game.