The Game Sails to Asia
1895 to 1913. Missionaries take basketball to China, Japan and the Philippines
Basketball was invented at a YMCA school, and the YMCA had branches and missionaries around the world. They carried the new game with them, and Asia was one of the first places it took root.
In 1895, only four years after the first game in Springfield, the YMCA brought basketball to Tianjin in China. In Japan, recent research shows that girls at mission schools, taught by American women missionaries, were playing by around 1902, several years before Japanese men took up the game. From 1914, YMCA physical director Franklin H. Brown helped spread it across the country.
In 1913, Manila hosted the first Far Eastern Championship Games, a multi-sport event for Asian nations, and basketball was on the program. The Philippines won. They went on to win nine of the ten basketball tournaments held at the Games, losing only once, to China in 1921. By 1935, basketball was counted as one of China's two national sports, alongside table tennis.
What changed
Regular tournaments between Asian nations gave teams a reason to train and coach seriously, almost 20 years before FIBA existed. The deep basketball culture in the Philippines and China today has its roots in this period.