HISTORY OF BASKETBALL

The Birthplace of Basketball

Basketball is built into the fabric of Springfield College. The game was invented by
Springfield College instructor and graduate student James Naismith in 1891, and
has grown into the worldwide athletic phenomenon we know it to be today.

Where Basketball Originated

It was the winter of 1891-1892. Inside a gymnasium at Springfield College (then known
as the International YMCA Training School), located in Springfield, Mass., was a group
of restless college students. The young men had to be there; they were required to
participate in indoor activities to burn off the energy that had been building up since their
football season ended. The gymnasium class offered them activities such as marching,
calisthenics, and apparatus work, but these were pale substitutes for the more exciting
games of football and lacrosse they played in warmer seasons.

James Naismith, The Person Who Invented Basketball

The instructor of this class was James Naismith, a 31-year-old graduate student. After
graduating from Presbyterian College in Montreal with a theology degree, Naismith
embraced his love of athletics and headed to Springfield to study physical education—at
that time, a relatively new and unknown academic discipline—under Luther Halsey
Gulick, superintendent of physical education at the College and today renowned as
the father of physical education and recreation in the United States.

As Naismith, a second-year graduate student who had been named to the teaching
faculty, looked at his class, his mind flashed to the summer session of 1891, when
Gulick introduced a new course in the psychology of play. In class discussions, Gulick
had stressed the need for a new indoor game, one “that would be interesting, easy to
learn, and easy to play in the winter and by artificial light.” No one in the class had
followed up on Gulick’s challenge to invent such a game. But now, faced with the end of
the fall sports season and students dreading the mandatory and dull required
gymnasium work, Naismith had a new motivation.

Two instructors had already tried and failed to devise activities that would interest the
young men. The faculty had met to discuss what was becoming a persistent problem
with the class’s unbridled energy and disinterest in required work.

During the meeting, Naismith later wrote that he had expressed his opinion that “the
trouble is not with the men, but with the system that we are using.” He felt that the kind
of work needed to motivate and inspire the young men he faced “should be of a
recreative nature, something that would appeal to their play instincts.”

Before the end of the faculty meeting, Gulick placed the problem squarely in Naismith’s
lap.

“Naismith,” he said. “I want you to take that class and see what you can do with it.”

So Naismith went to work. His charge was to create a game that was easy to assimilate,
yet complex enough to be interesting. It had to be playable indoors or on any kind of
ground, and by a large number of players all at once. It should provide plenty of
exercise, yet without the roughness of football, soccer, or rugby since those would
threaten bruises and broken bones if played in a confined space.
Much time and thought went into this new creation. It became an adaptation of many
games of its time, including American rugby (passing), English rugby (the jump ball),
lacrosse (use of a goal), soccer (the shape and size of the ball), and something called
duck on a rock, a game Naismith had played with his childhood friends in Bennie’s
Corners, Ontario. Duck on a rock used a ball and a goal that could not be rushed. The
goal could not be slammed through, thus necessitating “a goal with a horizontal opening
high enough so that the ball would have to be tossed into it, rather than being thrown.”

Naismith approached the school janitor, hoping he could find two, 18-inch square boxes
to use as goals. The janitor came back with two peach baskets instead. Naismith then
nailed them to the lower rail of the gymnasium balcony, one at each end. The height of
that lower balcony rail happened to be ten feet. A man was stationed at each end of the
balcony to pick the ball from the basket and put it back into play. It wasn’t until a few
years later that the bottoms of those peach baskets were cut to let the ball fall loose.

Naismith then drew up the 13 original rules, which described, among other facets, the
method of moving the ball and what constituted a foul. A referee was appointed. The
game would be divided into two, 15-minute halves with a five-minute resting period in
between. Naismith’s secretary typed up the rules and tacked them on the bulletin board.
A short time later, the gym class met, and the teams were chosen with three centers,
three forwards, and three guards per side. Two of the centers met at mid-court,
Naismith tossed the ball, and the game of “basket ball” was born.

The Year Basketball was Invented

Word of the new game spread like wildfire. It was an instant success. A few weeks after
the game was invented, students introduced the game at their own YMCAs. The rules
were printed in a College magazine, which was mailed to YMCAs around the country.
Because of the College’s well-represented international student body, the game of
basketball was introduced to many foreign nations in a relatively short period of time.
High schools and colleges began to introduce the new game, and by 1905, basketball
was officially recognized as a permanent winter sport.
The rules have been tinkered with, but by-and-large, the game of “basket ball” has not
changed drastically since Naismith’s original list of “Thirteen Rules” was tacked up on a
bulletin board at Springfield College.

Where was Basketball Invented?

There’s been some confusion over the precise nature of the official relationship between
Springfield College and the YMCA, as it relates to James Naismith and the invention of
basketball.

The confusion stems in part from changes in the School’s name in its early history.
Originally the School for Christian Workers, the School early in its history had three
other names which included “YMCA”: the YMCA Training School, the International
YMCA Training School, and, later still, the International YMCA College. The College
didn’t officially adopt the name “Springfield College” until 1954, even though it had been
known informally as “Springfield College” for many years.

But by whatever name, since its founding in 1885 Springfield College has always been
a private and independent institution. The College has enjoyed a long and productive
collaboration with the YMCA, but has never had any formal organizational ties to the
YMCA movement.

The confusion has been compounded by a small sign on the corner of the building
where basketball was invented. The building stood at the corner of State and Sherman
streets in Springfield, Massachusetts. The sign, carrying the words “Armory Hill Young
Men’s Christian Association,” is visible in old photographs of the building that have
circulated online. This has led some to believe, erroneously, that the Armory Hill YMCA
owned the building, and that James Naismith was an employee of the YMCA.

However, in 2010, some historic YMCA documents and Springfield College documents
from the period were rediscovered. These documents prove conclusively that the
gymnasium in which Naismith invented basketball was located not in a YMCA but in a
building owned and operated by the School for Christian Workers, from which today’s
Springfield College originated. The building also included classrooms, dormitory rooms,
and faculty and staff offices for the institution. The Armory Hill YMCA rented space in
the building for its activities, and used the small sign to attract paying customers.

James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, was an instructor in physical education at

the College. It was Luther Halsey Gulick, Naismith’s supervisor and the College’s first
physical education director, who challenged Naismith to invent a new indoor game for
the School’s students to play during the long New England winter. There is currently no
evidence to suggest that either man ever worked for the Armory Hill YMCA, per se.

In the early years the number of players on a team varied according to the number in
the class and the size of the playing area. In 1894 teams began to play with five on a
side when the playing area was less than 1,800 square feet (167.2 square metres); the
number rose to seven when the gymnasium measured from 1,800 to 3,600 square feet
(334.5 square metres) and up to nine when the playing area exceeded that. In 1895 the
number was occasionally set at five by mutual consent; the rules stipulated five players
two years later, and this number has remained ever since.
 Players shooting into a closed-bottom peach basket in an outdoor game of basketball,
1892.

Courtesy of the Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.

Since Naismith and five of his original players were Canadians, it is not surprising that
Canada was the first country outside the United States to play the game. Basketball
was introduced in France in 1893, in England in 1894, in Australia, China, and India
soon thereafter, and in Japan in 1900.

While basketball helped swell the membership of YMCAs because of the availability of
their gyms, within five years the game was outlawed by various associations because
gyms that had been occupied by classes of 50 or 60 members were now monopolized
by only 10 to 18 players. The banishment of the game induced many members to
terminate their YMCA membership and to hire halls to play the game, thus paving the
way to the professionalization of the sport.

Originally, players wore one of three styles of uniforms: knee-length football trousers;
jersey tights, as commonly worn by wrestlers; or short padded pants, forerunners of
today’s uniforms, plus knee guards. The courts often were of irregular shape with
occasional obstructions such as pillars, stairways, or offices that interfered with play. In
1903 it was ruled that all boundary lines must be straight. In 1893 the Narragansett
Machinery Co. of Providence, Rhode Island, marketed a hoop of iron with a hammock
style of basket. Originally a ladder, then a pole, and finally a chain fastened to the
bottom of the net was used to retrieve a ball after a goal had been scored. Nets open at
the bottom were adopted in 1912–13. In 1895–96 the points for making a basket (goal,
or field goal) were reduced from three to two, and the points for making a free throw
(shot uncontested from a line in front of the basket after a foul had been committed)
were reduced from three to one.

Baskets were frequently attached to balconies, making it easy for spectators behind a
basket to lean over the railings and deflect the ball to favour one side and hinder the
other; in 1895 teams were urged to provide a 4-by-6-foot (1.2-by-1.8-metre) screen for
the purpose of eliminating interference. Soon after, wooden backboards proved more
suitable. Glass backboards were legalized by the professionals in 1908–09 and by
colleges in 1909–10. In 1920–21 the backboards were moved 2 feet (0.6 metre), and in
1939–40 4 feet, in from the end lines to reduce frequent stepping out-of-bounds. Fan-
shaped backboards were made legal in 1940–41.

A soccer ball (football) was used for the first two years. In 1894 the first basketball was
marketed. It was laced, measured close to 32 inches (81 cm), or about 4 inches (10 cm)
larger than the soccer ball, in circumference, and weighed less than 20 ounces (567
grams). By 1948–49, when the laceless molded ball was made official, the size had
been set at 30 inches (76 cm).

The first college to play the game was either Geneva College (Beaver Falls,
Pennsylvania) or the University of Iowa. C.O. Bemis heard about the new sport at
Springfield and tried it out with his students at Geneva in 1892. At Iowa, H.F.
Kallenberg, who had attended Springfield in 1890, wrote Naismith for a copy of the rules
and also presented the game to his students. At Springfield, Kallenberg met Amos
Alonzo Stagg, who became athletic director at the new University of Chicago in 1892.
The first college basketball game with five on a side was played between the University
of Chicago and the University of Iowa in Iowa City on January 18, 1896. The University
of Chicago won, 15–12, with neither team using a substitute. Kallenberg refereed that
game—a common practice in that era—and some of the spectators took exception to
some of his decisions.

The colleges formed their own rules committee in 1905, and by 1913 there were at least
five sets of rules: collegiate, YMCA–Amateur Athletic Union, those used by state militia
groups, and two varieties of professional rules. Teams often agreed to play under a
different set for each half of a game. To establish some measure of uniformity, the
colleges, Amateur Athletic Union, and YMCA formed the Joint Rules Committee in
1915. This group was renamed the National Basketball Committee (NBC) of the United
States and Canada in 1936 and until 1979 served as the game’s sole amateur rule-
making body. In that year, however, the colleges broke away to form their own rules
committee, and during the same year the National Federation of State High School
Associations likewise assumed the task of establishing separate playing rules for the
high schools. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Rules Committee for
men is a 12-member board representing all three NCAA divisions. It has six members
from Division I schools and three each from Divisions II and III. It has jurisdiction over
colleges, junior colleges, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA),
and Armed Forces basketball. There is a similar body for women’s play.

The Original 13 Rules of Basketball

1. The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.
2. The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands (never with the
fist).
3. A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which
he catches it, allowance to be made for a man who catches the ball when
running at a good speed if he tries to stop.
4. The ball must be held in or between the hands; the arms or body must not be
used for holding it.
5. No shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or striking in any way the person of an
opponent shall be allowed; the first infringement of this rule by any player shall
count as a foul, the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is made, or, if
there was evident intent to injure the person, for the whole of the game, no
substitute allowed.
6. A foul is striking at the ball with the fist, violation of Rules 3, 4, and such as
described in Rule 5.
7. If either side makes three consecutive fouls, it shall count for a goal for the
opponents (consecutive means without the opponents in the meantime making a
foul).
8. A goal shall be made when the ball is thrown or batted from the grounds into the
basket and stays there, providing those defending the goal do not touch or
disturb the goal. If the ball rests on the edges, and the opponent moves the
basket, it shall count as a goal.
9. When the ball goes out of bounds, it shall be thrown into the field of play by the
person first touching it. In case of a dispute, the umpire shall throw it straight into
the field. The thrower-in is allowed five seconds; if he holds it longer, it shall go to
the opponent. If any side persists in delaying the game, the umpire shall call a
foul on that side.
10. The umpire shall be judge of the men and shall note the fouls and notify the
referee when three consecutive fouls have been made. He shall have power to
disqualify men according to Rule 5.
11. The referee shall be judge of the ball and shall decide when the ball is in play, in
bounds, to which side it belongs, and shall keep the time. He shall decide when a
 goal has been made, and keep account of the goals with any duties that are
usually performed by a referee.
12. The time shall be two 15-minute halves, with five minutes' rest between.
13. The side making the most goals in that time shall be declared the winner. In case
of a draw, the game may, by agreement of the captains, be continued until
another goal is made.
14. The original rules of basket ball were written by Springfield College graduate
instructor James Naismith in December 1891 and published in January 1892 in
the Springfield College school magazine, The Triangle.

Basketball equipment and facilities

● Basketball court
● Free throw line
● Backboard
● Basketball
● Basket Ring