ball game vs basketball

ball game

noun
  • Any game played with a ball. 

  • A decisive outcome in regard to some ongoing situation; game over. 

  • Affair, issue, matter, subject, story, topic. 

  • A specific contest or match between teams playing such a game, in particular a baseball game. 

  • A sport played in the Aztec and Mayan civilizations; Mesoamerican ballgame. 

basketball

noun
  • A sport in which two opposing teams of five players strive to put a ball through a hoop. 

  • The particular kind of ball used in the sport of basketball. 

verb
  • To throw in a similar way to when shooting a basketball 

  • To play basketball 

How often have the words ball game and basketball occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )