James Naismith: The Invention Of Basketball

Cause and Effect: James Naismith

I’m running out of time. I need help. Oh, I have an idea! How about we use peach baskets from the cafeteria and just cut a whole out of the bottom for the basket? I’m James Naismith. My invention of basketball had and still has a huge effect on the world. I was born on November 6th, 1861 in Almonte, Canada. My entire life I loved playing sports, which is why I became a Physical Ed teacher. Springfield, Massachusetts is where the invention of basketball started. In 1891 the man who was in charge of the school, Dr. Luther Gulick, told me that I had 14 days to create an indoor game. The game I was making was for a rowdy class of students during the brutal New England winter.

After a while of thinking I thought of bringing games like lacrosse or soccer inside. Then I decided that those outside games wouldn’t work and then I realized that I was running out of time to create a game. So then I recalled a game that I played as a child called “duck on a rock.” This game included tossing rocks at another, larger rock atop a boulder and knocking the rock down. I also remembered rugby players throwing a ball into a box in a gymnasium.

Although I was having trouble finding baskets, I then figured out I could just use the discarded peach baskets from the school cafeteria. When I realized there was a problem with people having to grab the ball out of the basket every time I decided to cut a hole out of the bottom. Once I finally created the game it took me up to an hour to come up with the rules. I named it basketball. The first college teams to play were the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago, with a final score of Chicago’s 15, to Iowa’s