In 1892, James Naismith officially debuted the game of basketball. Naismith, then a teacher at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, had invented the game at the end of 1891, and on Jan. 15 the next year, he formally published the rules. In its earliest days, basketball was a pastime for his young students . But the game has evolved since Naismith nailed two empty peach baskets to opposite ends of the gym and lay the groundwork for one of the most popular sports in the world. Most notably, basketball took on a new life and look when it expanded beyond its segregated confines and into more diverse gymnasiums, where people of color and women were allowed to play and impart their own flair.

In the 127 years since basketball was invented, several hoops stars have left their mark on the game through sheer dominance; their command of the court required literal rule changes just to level the playing field for opponents. But in that time, others have influenced the game in less technical, more philosophical ways; these are people who may not have spurred a rule change, but whose presence in the sport forced us to reimagine what a basketball player looks like and what they mean to the broader public. To commemorate the 127th year of basketballs existence, HuffPost compiled a list of some of the most memorable, influential and important rule breakers in basketball history. From the NCAAs attempts to ban Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from dunking to the Minnesota Lynxs public stance against police brutality, below are athletes who changed the look, feel or complexion of the game in some cases, literally.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Dunk Ban