Who invented the sport of basketball?

James Naismith was a Canadian PE teacher. In December 1891 he decided to invent a new game for his students not to be get bored during the long winter. Naismith just nailed a basket to a tall pole and wrote the rules. The game was ready to play! Naismith's students met basketball with great interest! The game of that time only differed from the modern one by the bottom of the basket still remained. Later, when the game got really popular, players decided to remove the bottom not to get the ball out of the basket every time.

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43 Comments

Stephen Forest

Surprised that Basketball is so recent.. Even Netball is a basketball derivative for girls. Soccer is very old. Leonardo Da Vinci used to play. It took a long time for someone to hang up a net!

Irene Townsend

My son did a paper on Basketball years ago. one of the rules at the beginning was to get the ball in the basket without touching the basket. Nowadays you see the players swing on the basket, don't know why apart from no other reason than to show off, I mean there is no benefit to the game itself, so pointless doing it

Bob Blumrick

I’m PROUD of my Texan heritage and history!

Bob Blumrick

I’m sure the game did go faster with the bottom knocked out of the basket.

Bob Blumrick

Howard Gerritsen (Semiotician), I’ve had problems with people wanting me to “expand” on something, or provide metric equivalents to English measurements when I’m already maxed out on characters (1500 - ridiculous). I’ve had others seemingly look down their noses at my questions “of local interest”. It does get discouraging and frustrating.