How Basketball Was Invented
Peach baskets and 13 rules. In December 1891, James Naismith nailed two peach baskets to a gym balcony in Springfield and wrote 13 rules. The result became basketball.
Naismith statue in Almonte: D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY-SA 3.0
A winter problem
In late 1891, James Naismith was an instructor at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, now Springfield College. His boss asked him to invent an indoor game that would keep a restless class of young men active through the New England winter.
Naismith, a Canadian from Almonte, Ontario, wanted a game that rewarded skill over roughness. He chose a soccer ball, an elevated goal so that players would have to shoot with an arc instead of force, and rules that banned running with the ball.
He borrowed ideas from games he knew, including a childhood game called duck on a rock, where players tossed stones in an arc to knock a target off a rock.
Peach baskets and 13 rules
The school janitor could not find boxes, so he brought two peach baskets. Naismith nailed them to the balcony railing, which happened to be about 10 feet high, the rim height still used today.
He typed 13 rules and pinned them to the bulletin board. The first game, in December 1891, was played with nine players a side and ended with a single basket. Someone had to climb up and get the ball out after every score.
How the game grew
Basketball spread fast through YMCA branches and colleges. Senda Berenson adapted it for women at Smith College in 1892. Dribbling became part of the game in the 1890s, backboards were added partly to stop fans in balconies from interfering, and open-bottom nets eventually replaced the baskets.
Naismith became a coach at the University of Kansas. Basketball entered the Olympics at the 1936 Berlin Games, and Naismith was there to see it. The Basketball Association of America started in 1946 and became the NBA in 1949.
Early games sometimes had nine or more players a side. Five a side became standard by the late 1890s.
His legacy
Naismith died in 1939. The Hall of Fame in Springfield carries his name, and his original typed rules sold at auction in 2010 for more than four million dollars.
Many of his ideas survive: a 10-foot goal, no running with the ball, and a game that rewards touch and teamwork. Every time someone shoots at a park, they are playing his invention.
Kansas went on to become a college basketball powerhouse, and its home floor is named James Naismith Court, inside an arena named for Phog Allen, one of his former players who became a legendary coach.
- Naismith statue in Almonte: D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY-SA 3.0
- James Naismith: Unknown author, Public domain
- The original rules: James Naismith, Public domain
Text written by Fly Baller.
