The Invention of Basketball

Most people think that James Naismith, who was born in 1861 in Ontario, Canada, invented basketball. The story goes that James enjoyed athletics and playing games. One of his favorite games was “duck on a rock.” The duck wasn’t an actual duck. It was a small rock that was placed on top of a big rock. The object of the game was to knock the ‘duck’ off the rock by throwing a small stone. This simple game was part of a later inspiration behind his invention of the game of…

By the time James was 30, he had moved to the US. He lived in Springfield, Massachusetts, working as a physical education teacher at the YMCA. He needed to keep his young students active and occupied during the cold winters. After considering the most popular games of the time, which were rugby, lacrosse, soccer, baseball, and football, he thought back to his “duck on a rock” boyhood game. He took the best aspects from all of those games and came up with basketball in 1892.