The inventor of basketball was born in Canada and graduated from McGill University and from the Presbyterian seminary in Toronto. In 1890 he entered the YMCA college in Springfield, Massachusetts, and it was there that James Naismith came up with the new game.
Designed as something different that could be played indoors with a limited number of players, basketball was an immediate success with the Springfield students. By the turn of the century several schools in the East had begun intercollegiate competition. From Springfield, Naismith went to Denver where he acquired a medical degree and in 1898 he joined the Kansas University faculty at Lawrence. He was hired because he had the qualifications to serve the university as a physical education professor and as a chaplain. He remained in Lawrence until his death in 1939.
Dr. Naismith regarded his invention of the game as just an episode in a long career devoted to the improvement of the physical condition of succeeding generations. He thought wrestling was better exercise than basketball and one reporter said he drew as much pleasure from watching gymnasts as he did from K.U. basketball. When one of his former students, Forrest “Phog” Allen, told him he was going to Baker University to coach basketball Naismith said, “Why, basketball is just a game to play. It doesn’t need a coach.”
In 1936, the first year basketball was included in Olympic competition, money was raised to send Naismith to Berlin so that he could see his game played internationally. When he returned he commented that seeing the game played by many nations was the greatest compensation he could have received for his invention.
Dr. Naismith’s basketball rules took one page and less than 600 words. Today, there are more than 30,000 words in the rules. The game is far more complicated than when Naismith hung up the peach baskets in Springfield in 1891.
