A Brief History of Carpeted Mormon Basketball

American Mormons have a longstanding and well-documented relationship with basketball. Aside from a few outliers like Steve Young and Bryce Harper, our most famous athletes are all basketball players—Jabari Parker, Jimmer Fredette, Shawn Bradley, Danny Ainge, and those two missionaries who went viral for balling out in full shirt and tie. Basketball is one of the few sports missionaries are allowed to play, though the handbook says they should only play half-court—a rule that, in my experience, is less stringently obeyed than the others.