Origins of the Game.

In the fall of 1891 James Naismith, a physical-education instructor at the Young Men's Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, developed basketball to replace gymnastics and calisthenics routinely practiced during the winter months. After studying the attributes of lacrosse, football, rugby, and soccer, he created a game in which players would bounce and pass a soccer ball from one another and score points by tossing the ball into a suspended goal. The fundamental concept for the game came to him from watching rugby players spend the winter months throwing rugby balls into boxes. Instead of boxes for goals, Naismith used bottomless peach baskets hung at opposite ends of the railing surrounding the YMCA gymnasium, ten feet above the floor. On 21 December 1891 he introduced basketball to his students, who had tired of their instructor's experimentation with new games that fall. Naismith recalled...