But no one likes short answers so lets briefly dive into the history of Basketball. Basketball was created by a man named Dr. James Naismith in the town of, you guessed it, Springfield Massachusetts. Dr. Naismith thought up the idea of basketball in 1891 when he was asked to think of a game for a P.E class during the winter months. His inspiration stemmed from a game he used to play as a child known as "Duck on a Rock" (for a short demonstration of Duck on a Rock, click here).
The early concept of the game is much like the game we know today. Two teams attempting to score by throwing a ball through a "hoop" to score points. I use the "" because in today's game it is clearly a hoop but when the game originated they used nailed up boxes or peach baskets if boxes were not available. One aspect of the game that has changed a little bit since Dr. Naismith founded are the rules. Dr. Naismith thought up thirteen original rules for basketball (for thirteen original rules click here), which according to Alexander Wolff in his book, 100 Years of Hoops, took Dr. Naismith only one hour to think up! The link provided for the thirteen original rules of basketball is one of my favorites because the author list the thirteen rules followed by comments on how the rule has changed and/or adapted.
So as I mentioned earlier, basketball was brought to life in Springfield, Massachusetts. So why do people commonly mistake it for being originated in the heart of Kansas (at least I did for quite some time)? Well that's because Dr. Naismith also founded the Kansas Jayhawks basketball program in 1998, only seven years after he founded the game himself!
I hope you enjoyed this brief look into the history of basketball and its founded Dr. Naismith. There are a plethora of articles available on the history of basketball out there to read that go much deeper than I did, so I encourage you to go and learn much more!
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