How was basketball invented?

Basketball was invented by James Naismith, a graduate student and instructor at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, now Springfield College. He devised the game in the winter of 1891-1892 to occupy students who were bored with indoor gym work after the football season ended. The first game based on his rules was played on December 21, 1891, with a soccer ball and two peach baskets as goals. [1] [2]

The students were required to attend indoor classes of marching, calisthenics and apparatus work, which they found dull compared with football and lacrosse. Two instructors had already tried and failed to interest the class. At a faculty meeting, Naismith argued that the trouble lay in the system rather than the men, and Luther Halsey Gulick, the head of physical education, told him to take the class and see what he could do. Gulick had also stressed in a summer course that a new indoor game was needed, one that was easy to learn and playable in winter under artificial light. [1] [2]

The game had to be playable indoors by many players at once and give plenty of exercise without the roughness of football, soccer or rugby, which risked injuries in a confined space. [3]

According to Springfield College, Naismith adapted several existing games. Passing came from American rugby, the jump ball from English rugby, the idea of a goal from lacrosse, and the ball from soccer. He also drew on a childhood game called duck on a rock, which suggested a goal that could not be rushed or slammed through, so the ball had to be tossed into an opening high enough to require an arc. [1] [4]

Naismith asked the school janitor for two square boxes. The janitor returned with two peach baskets, which Naismith nailed to the lower rail of the gymnasium balcony. That rail happened to be ten feet high, which became the standard height of the hoop. Someone stood at each end to retrieve the ball from the basket and put it back in play. The bottoms were cut out of the baskets only some years later. [1] [3]

Naismith wrote 13 rules covering movement of the ball, fouls, timing, scoring and the referee's duties. The first game used two teams of nine, 18 students in all. Springfield College says it was played in two 15-minute halves with a five-minute break. Naismith published the rules in the school newspaper, the Triangle, on January 15, 1892. [1] [2]

FIBA reports an audio interview in which Naismith said the first match turned rough, with tackling and punching, and that one boy was knocked out. He said he then added rules, the most important being that players could not run with the ball. The game was refined afterward: Spalding made a ball to his specifications in 1894, and peach baskets gave way to open-bottomed baskets, metal rims and backboards. [5] [2]

The sources differ slightly on Naismith's age, giving 30 in one and 31 in others, and on where he studied before Springfield. [2] [1]