Who Invented Basketball
A search on the two key words from your question, “invented basketball,” scored a number of web page results. We browsed around and eventually pieced together the colorful history of the sport. Basket Ball (the original name of the game) was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a teacher at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. At Hoophall.com, the official site of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, we learned that, “The game of basketball was the result of a challenge from a teacher to his student to pique the interest of an incorrigible class during the usually dull winter months.” Apparently, the class was tired of calisthenics and Naismith’s instructor assigned him the duty of inventing a new indoor sport. Taking to t
In 1891, James Naismith, a physical education instructor at the International Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) Training School (now Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented basketball so that his students would have a game to play indoors during the winter months. Naismith wanted his students to shoot a leather soccer ball into a box attached to the wall, but when a box was not available, a janitor nailed peach baskets to the balcony railing of the gym, thus setting the height of present-day basketball baskets at ten feet above the ground. One of the students wanted to call the game Naismith ball, but the inventor dubbed it simply “basketball.” The game became popular among college students, and the first professional basketball game took place when players in Trenton, New Jersey, charged spectators for admission to a game in order to pay the cost of renting the gym….
