I always love the beginning of the NFHS rulebook. It starts with a very simple summary:
"Basketball is played by two teams of five players each. The purpose of each team is to throw the ball into its own basket and to prevent the other team from scoring. The ball may be thrown, batted, rolled or dribbled in any direction, subject to restrictions laid down in the following rules."
Then poof, it goes into 50 pages or so of little restrictions that people have added over the years to cover each individual thing that can happen on the basketball court.
