13. The Creation of Basketball, Part 2
Naismith’s game was quite popular, and in 1898, only seven years after he created the rules, he was hired by the University of Kansas to coach a basketball program. At the time, the game had been introduced throughout the network of American YMCAs and was growing in popularity. The majority of the team’s early games were played against YMCA locations, not other colleges. However, by the start of the 20th-century basketball had become popular enough that colleges across the country adopted it and began playing against each other.
A modest man, Naismith rejected early attempts to call basketball “Naismith ball” preferring to stick with his original name, although with the space removed, of basket ball. In 2004, Naismith’s original typed rules were sold at a Sotheby’s auction for over $4 million, with the winners donating the item to the University of Kansas for historical preservation.
Growing from the humble origins of 13 points of rules, the modern standards for basketball are now over 80 pages and include many elements that deviate from Naismith’s original, including dribbling which he intentionally omitted due to the perception it would cause injury when played indoors by rowdy kids. Basketball is now one of the most popularly played sports worldwide.