14. The Creation of Basketball, Part 1
James Naismith invented the game of basketball in 1891 while serving as an athletic teacher at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusettes. He had been given 14 days by YMCA administrators to make a safe and fun game to entertain children bored and rowdy by being pent up during the frigid Massachusettes winters. Naismith, originally from Canada, was a poor student but gifted athlete who spent his youth engaging in numerous sports and games. With memories of overhand, lobbing throws from childhood stone games in his mind, he settled down and typed up two pages containing a thirteen-point list of rules for a game he called “basket ball.”
Naismith’s idea was to have a safe game for indoor play, as he’d seen many injuries from rough indoor play with games that involved dribbling, running or physical contact. Thus, the original rules of basketball did not allow dribbling. Players could only pass the ball between each other. The original rules also had three hoops at each end of the court, more akin to Quidditch, for those familiar with Harry Potter, than modern basketball. The baskets also did not have nets, so the ball would have to be retrieved from one of the six baskets after each score.