In 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts at a YMCA school a young physical education teacher named James Naismith found himself frustrated during the winter months because there was no game to play with his students indoors. He spent a lot of time speculating about how to overcome this deficiency but all he could come up with was various forms of dodgeball and touch football in the gymnasium. However, above the gym floor there was a running track and he began to wonder if somehow he could devise a game that incorporated the vertical dimension as well as the horizontal one.
Naismith figured that if he could place the respective goals above the floor it would add a whole new dimension to the students’ games. He borrowed two peach baskets from the janitor and hung them from the edge of the running track, one at each end of the gym. As it happened, the running track was placed exactly ten feet above the playing floor. With an old soccer ball to throw into the baskets Naismith had the makings of a brand-new game. Next, he had to devise various rules that would govern the way the game would be played.
It was not long before he realized that the baskets had to have their bottoms cut out so the ball could be retrieved easily after a goal was scored. Then he made rules about how the ball could be passed and how defenders could not foul the players with the ball. Fouling had to be defined differently from the way it was in football. Before long Naismith had in fact invented a brand-new game which was destined to sweep through the entire world. In fact, by the 1930’s nearly every high school and college in the country had built basketball courts and fielded a team. At first there were strict rules about dribbling, passing, and guarding, but soon these were revised in order to speed up the game and make it safer.
Within a decade Naismith became the first basketball coach of all time and shortly thereafter he became the Athletic Director and Basketball Coach at Kansas University. Soon the game was being played by school boys and college young men all over the country. By 1897 there were hundreds of teams all over the country and soon there were National and State championships every year. It wasn’t long before the Harlem Globetrotters began to tour the world with their crazy but highly effective antics. Today, of course, the game of basketball is a world-wide universal phenomenon.
I myself began to play basketball when I was about ten years old and I did not stop until I was 80 years old. I played on a college team and have played on various faculty teams throughout my teaching career. I’ve had the privilege of seeing many great games all around the country, including a couple of college championships and many, many professional games. In fact, I had a friend who coached in the NBA and I was able to see many of his teams’ games. In addition, I have initiated several basketball camps, one even in my wife’s home country of Finland.
I remember celebrating the one-hundred-year anniversary of basketball’s invention in 1991. It is hard to believe that I have lived through almost all of basketball’s history. With all its changes, in rules and types of players, basketball remains an amazing phenomenon. One can play it by oneself or with others, and it is always open to new ideas and people. A real game for everyone.