History of Basketball
Dr. James Naismith, is the inventor of basketball. He was born in 1861 in Ramsay Township, near Almonte, Ontario, Canada. The basketball was born from Naismith's school days in the area where he played a simple child's game known as duck-on-a-rock outside his one-room of school. The game involved attempting to knock a "duck" off the top of a large rock by tossing another rock at it.Naismith went to McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada for his higher study. After serving as McGill's Athletic Director, James Naismith moved on to the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA in 1891, where the sport of basketball was born. In Springfield, Naismith was faced with the problem. He needed a game that could be played indoors in a relatively small space. The first game was played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets used as goals. Naismith joined the University of Kansas faculty in 1898, teaching physical education and being a chaplain.
In addition to the creation of the basketball, James Naismith graduated as a medical doctor, primarily interested in sports physiology and what we would today call sports science and as Presbyterian minister, with a keen interest in philosophy and clean living. Naismith watched his sport, basketball, introduced in many nations by the YMCA as early as 1893. Basketball was introduced at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Naismith was flown to Berlin to watch the games. He died in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1939.
Today basketball has grown to become one of the world's most popular sports.