Who Invented Basketball?

Most games sprout up over time from pastimes that people learned to play colloquially. Not so with basketball, history makes clear that it has the feature of being a planned or designed game. What began as a winter pastime with 18 men in a YMCA gymnasium in Springfield, Mass, has grown into a game that more than 300 million people play worldwide; the man who created this instantly successful sport was Dr James Naismith. Naismith was instructed to devise a professional sport which could be played inside for the time of the cold winter months that bridged football and baseball.

The students, who were studying to be Pe teachers, were understandably bored doing nothing but calisthenics and eurythmics for the time of those long New England winters. They were desperate for action and competition. The game involved elements of American football, soccer, and hockey, and soccer provided the first ball.

His concept for basketball was rooted in a basic child's game he had enjoyed playing at his one-room schoolhouse as a child, which was called "duck-on-a-rock". The game necessitated the players knocking a "duck" from the top of a large rock by tossing another rock at it. Early basketball evolved from this idea. The first basketball contest was played with a soccer ball, peach baskets and nine to a side. This first basketball game is believed to have been played Dec. 21, 1891. By 1897-1898, teams of five was promoted to the norm.

About James Naismith:

Naismith ultimately took the job of head of the sports faculty at Kansas, and designed the first golf course in Kansas. His favorite sport was fencing at which he was excellent. Naismith designed basketball for fun, as a simple indoor sporting activity, not as something to be serious about! He said often, "Basketball is just a game to play. It doesn�t need a coach you don�t coach basketball, you just play it."

Nevertheless, he took the job of basketball coach at Kansas in 1900, and lost his first game 48-8 to Nebraska. He coached for eight years and his won-loss record was only just over 50%. Even so he began a strong Kansas tradition.

For years, the Kansas Jayhawks had one of the best teams in all of college basketball. Phog Allen (Kansas, record: 590-219), Adolph Rupp (Kentucky), and Dean Smith (North Carolina) were all Jayhawks. Naismith never patented his game, and did not profit from it. Lawyers recommended that he get a patent, however he was always expressly opposed to it. Later his bank balance was so bad that his house in Kansas was repossessed by the bank. Dr. Naismith worked with the famous football coach, Amos Alonzo Stagg. Naismith's personal chronicles, discovered by his granddaughter in early 2006, tell us that naismith was not confident in the new game he had designed as many other home made games had crashed before it. Dr Naismith never benefitted financially from basketball but his name will live as the man who invented basketball.