Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Most people are familiar with at least a few details of basketball's humble origin story: the creative gym teacher who thought it up, the simple peach baskets for hoops, and the sport's initial lack of dribbling.

discovery of a 1939 recording of a radio interview

 the invention of one of the world's most popular sports.


Naismith was a physical education teacher at what's now Springfield College in Massachusetts. That winter, a blizzard pounded the region and Naismith's students had cabin fever from being cooped up inside. To ward off the boredom, Naismith got creative with an old soccer ball.

"I called the boys to the gym, I showed them two peach baskets I had nailed up at each end of the gym, and I told them the idea was to throw the ball into the opposing team's peach basket," he said. "I blew a whistle, and the first game of basketball began."

A University of Kansas professor, Michael Zogry, found the recording in the Library of Congress while he was researching Naismith. It's full of gems about how the game evolved in it's earliest stages. For example, when Naismith first introduced the game, the only rule was to put the ball in the basket.

"The boys began tackling, kicking and punching in the clinches," Naismith said. "Before I could pull them apart, one boy was knocked out, several had black eyes, and one had a dislocated shoulder."


So, Naismith added a few more regulations — the modern game still remains largely unchanged from his 

 — and the sport took off. American colleges were quick to adopt basketball and not long after the turn of the century, the game had also spread to Europe.



"In 1936, I saw it played for the first time at the Olympic games," Naismith said gleefully in the interview. "And the whole thing started with a couple of peach baskets I put up in a gym 48 years ago."  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Sports

In what may be the only recording of his voice, James Naismith describes how he created basketball to occupy his stir-crazy students during a snowy winter in New England.

In his own words: How a gym teacher invented basketball in 1891

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox