A problem in a Massachusetts gym
Basketball is unusual among major sports because its origin is well documented. It was devised in December 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian-born physical education instructor at the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. The school trained men for work at YMCAs, and its leaders wanted an indoor game that could fill the winter gap between the fall football season and the spring baseball season.
The problem was that the existing winter gym routines, mostly drills and calisthenics, bored the students. Naismith’s supervisor reportedly asked him to come up with something new within a short time. Several attempts to adapt outdoor games, such as football, soccer and lacrosse, failed indoors, mainly because tackling on a hard floor led to injuries.
What Naismith designed
Naismith’s approach was to think about what made the games popular and what made them rough. He decided that the new game should use a large, light ball that could be handled, as in football, but that running with the ball would be forbidden, which would reduce tackling. He also wanted to prevent any single player from dominating by shooting hard, so he set the goal above head height. A horizontal goal at a high spot would require arcing shots and reward touch rather than force.
He asked the school’s janitor for two boxes to serve as goals. According to the standard story, the janitor offered two peach baskets instead, and Naismith nailed them to the lower rail of the gymnasium’s running track. That rail was ten feet, or about three meters, above the floor, and ten feet has remained the standard height for more than a century. The shape of the original basket, with a closed bottom, meant that someone had to retrieve the ball by hand or by ladder after each score. The details of the baskets and the janitor are part of the game’s folklore, and we should treat them as the most-cited account rather than a transcript.
The first game is reported to have been played in December 1891, with about eighteen students split into two teams of nine, a soccer ball and a final score of one point to nothing. Naismith wrote down thirteen rules, which he posted for the class. Among them were that the ball could be thrown in any direction with one or two hands, that a player could not run with the ball, and that a foul was a violation involving shoving, holding or striking.
Early changes
The game spread rapidly through the YMCA network, and students and instructors carried it to other places. The rules and the equipment changed.
- Open-bottomed hoops. After a time, the bottoms were removed from the baskets, so the ball dropped through. Metal hoops with netting were in use in the 1890s, and the net later became a standard part of the goal.
- Backboards. Spectators in galleries sometimes reached over and interfered with shots near the basket. A board behind the goal was added to prevent this, and it later became a surface from which a player could bank a shot.
- Number of players. The number on the court was reduced over time. Five a side became the norm in the early twentieth century.
- Dribbling. The first rules did not include dribbling, since the idea was to pass the ball. Bouncing the ball as a way of moving gradually became a part of the game and was formalized in the rules.
- Fouls and scoring. Rules about fouls, free throws and field goals were refined as the game became more competitive.
Women’s basketball was introduced early. Senda Berenson, a physical education instructor at Smith College, adapted the game for women in 1892, and her modifications reflected the social attitudes of her time, such as dividing the court into zones. Women’s rules gradually converged with the men’s.
The ball
The first game used an association football, or soccer ball, as it was the one available. A ball built for basketball came after that. Sporting goods firms introduced balls with a rubber bladder in a leather casing, designed to bounce reliably. The bladder owes something to vulcanized rubber, since earlier rubber could be sticky and break down. The brown leather ball was later replaced in popular use by an orange one, a change often credited to a coach named Tony Hinkle in the 1950s, in order to make the ball easier for players and spectators to see. Modern balls often use composite or synthetic materials.
From gym class to global sport
The sport spread to colleges and clubs, and then abroad. It was included as a demonstration at the 1904 Olympic Games and became an official Olympic event for men in 1936, when Naismith was present in Berlin, with women’s competition added in 1976. Professional leagues developed in the United States and elsewhere over the twentieth century. Radio broadcasting and, later, television broadcasting brought games to a larger audience, which helped the sport become a commercial success.
Naismith himself never sought to make a fortune from the game. He later worked as a university physical education director and chaplain. He is recorded as having lived long enough to see basketball reach the Olympics, and he died in 1939.
What to take from it
Basketball is a rare case in which the inventor, the date and the original purpose are all well attested: a single teacher solving a practical problem in a few days. Even so, many of the vivid details, such as the peach baskets and the janitor, come from later recollection. The sport’s long history since then is mostly one of small modifications: removing the basket’s bottom, adding a backboard, allowing dribbling, adjusting the number of players, and changing the ball. The idea of a goal above head height, which Naismith chose for reasons of safety, has stayed with it.