Before I became the basketball coach at the University of Kansas in 1988, my knowledge of James Naismith was pretty limited. I knew he had invented the game of basketball, and I knew he had been the first coach of Kansas, but that was basically the extent of what I knew.

Dean Smith, my coach at North Carolina, had gone to Kansas and played under Phog Allen, who had been a student of Dr. Naismith’s. Though Coach Smith told many stories about Dr. Allen, he did not talk much about Naismith—not surprising, considering that Coach Smith did not arrive...

When my grandfather left his uncle’s rural Canadian farm to go to college, he had no idea what the future held. He thought he wanted to become a minister, but what was uppermost in his mind was that, whatever he did, he wanted to find a way to help people.

He had no idea he was going to invent the game of basketball. He had no idea even that he was going to go into physical education. He certainly had no idea that the game—intended merely as an activity to fill the winter months between the sports of football...

Late into the night, Jim Naismith worked alone in the blacksmith shop. Spending an evening standing by a fire on the side of a frozen river, having only been able to watch as other kids from Bennie’s Corners skated and frolicked on the ice, had driven Naismith into action.

The 14-year-old Naismith didn’t have a pair of ice skates, and even in 1875 in rural Canada, most youngsters facing that situation would have immediately run home and begged their parents to buy them a new pair of skates.

For many reasons, Naismith was not like most 14-year-olds. Which is why,...

Not only did Naismith have to adjust to college life, but the move from the farm and the rural community of Almonte to the big city of Montreal also required him to adapt to a new environment. “As I walked down the street a peculiar feeling came over me,” he wrote later. “I had always lived in a community where everyone knew me and to a great measure controlled my actions. Here I was, in a city, on my own. No one knew me and what I did was my own business. This feeling was indeed new to me and...

One of the first things Naismith did after arriving in Springfield in the fall of 1890 was to see Dr. Gulick. Walking into the dean’s office, he found Gulick sitting at his desk, talking to another young man. Gulick immediately stood up and introduced Naismith to another student coming into the school that fall—Amos Alonzo Stagg.

Stagg had been an All-America football player at Yale, and a theological student, and it was natural that he and Naismith would become great friends because they shared many of the same ideas and philosophies about life and athletics. Like Naismith, Stagg and...

As Naismith arrived at his office the next morning, he picked up a football and soccer ball. He noticed how the football was shaped so it could be carried in the arms. Since running with the ball would not be allowed in his new game, Naismith chose to use the soccer ball.

Next, he had to find a couple of goals. As he walked down the hall of the gymnasium, he approached the superintendent of the building, Pop Stebbins, and asked if Pop had a couple of boxes about 18 inches square that he could use. “No,” Stebbins said, hesitating...

Moving nearly 2,000 miles in 1895 was not an easy task. For the new Mrs. Naismith, there was more involved than the physical move. Born and raised in the East, she had never lived anywhere else. She was close to her mother, and since the death of her father, that bond had grown even tighter.

Still, her love for her new husband, and the desire to see him fulfill his dreams, overrode whatever fears and apprehensions Maude Naismith had about the move west. She knew that her father, who also had been an inventor, would have approved of her marriage...

Amos Alonzo Stagg had left the Training School in 1892 to become the physical education director and football coach at the University of Chicago. Stagg and Naismith remained in touch, even after Naismith moved to Denver, and Stagg knew of Naismith’s graduation from medical school and readiness for a new, challenging position.

Stagg got a message one day in 1898 from his boss, William Harper, the president of the University of Chicago. Harper’s counterpart at the University of Kansas, Francis Snow, had contacted Harper to see if he could make a recommendation for a job Kansas was trying to fill....

Allen’s arrival on the Kansas campus was big news, and there was more anticipation about the upcoming basketball season than ever before. On October 18, theUniversity Daily Kansanreported that Allen had made his first appearance on the Snow Hall court the previous night.

“The ceiling was too low for him to show how well he could throw long goals, but he gave the men some good ideas of how to get into the game,” the newspaper reported. “Allen will be able to play in the games on this year’s schedule, and will make a strong addition to the...

Pancho Villa was a hero to the poor people of Mexico, and he had counted on support from the United States in his attempt to become the president of the country in 1915. When the U.S. government instead recognized the new Mexican government, Villa became upset. He took revenge on the United States by leading his troops on raids that killed many Americans along the border.

Concerned for the safety of Americans in the area, President Wilson ordered U.S. troops, under the command of General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, to Texas and New Mexico, where they began patrolling the...

A trans-Atlantic journey in 1917 on a troop ship would not likely have been a very pleasurable experience under any circumstance, but with a world war raging, it was even more precarious. German submarines were patrolling the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, and German leaders had pledged to sink any transport ship carrying U.S. soldiers to the war in France. The YMCA workers were the same as soldiers to the Germans.

Naismith sent a letter to his wife from New York, before sailing for France. “We sail Sunday, probably, and it will take us about 13 days to cross, so...

Naismith was happy to be reunited with his family and to be away from the horrors of the war. He gradually built his weight back to his accustomed 185 pounds, and he resumed his work teaching the various physical education classes at the university.

He also returned to his teaching at the Presbyterian church on Sunday. During the war, he had relaxed his feelings about how people should act on the Sabbath, and now he decided one Sunday to combine a baseball scoreboard with a game of Bible stories. When a question was missed, it was considered a strike. As...

John McLendon graduated from Sumner High School in Kansas City. He loved basketball and had decided as early as the sixth grade that he wanted to become a coach. He wanted to attend college in Springfield, Massachusetts, but could not afford to go that far away. McLendon’s father told him that the man who had invented the game was teaching just down the road in Lawrence, and “I ought to go there and learn from him.”

Furthermore, when McLendon’s father dropped him off at Kansas, he told his son to go find Naismith and introduce himself: “Tell him that he’s...

Even though basketball had been played in the Olympics as far back as the 1904 Games in St. Louis, those contests had always been viewed as “exhibitions” or a “demonstration” because teams from only one country participated. Similar contests were played at the 1924 Olympics in Paris and at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam.

By the 1930s, however, basketball definitely had grown to become an international sport. The sport was being played competitively in more than 20 countries on the continents of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Phog Allen had campaigned to have the sport included at...

One of the reasons Naismith had such an enjoyable time at the Olympics basketball competition was that the rules used for the games were the older, more traditional ones, without some of the new rules that had been put in place for games in the United States during the previous seasons.

Specifically, the Olympics retained the “old” rules of not having a center line and not forcing teams to move the ball across that line within 10 seconds. The rules also kept the center jump rule after a free throw was made.

Naismith said many times that he was not...

Naismith had been severely disappointed when Maude was unable to accompany him on his trip to Europe and the Olympics, and he was glad to be back home with her. The two really were soul mates, and all of the letters Naismith wrote to her during his extended time away from home testified to his love and devotion.

He also was pleased that enough money was left over from the funds collected to pay for his trip to the Olympics that he was able to pay off the mortgage on the family home at 1708 Mississippi Street. The Naismiths began...

In the foreword to Naismith’s book, published in 1941, two years after his death, in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of basketball’s invention, legendary coach Clair Bee wrote, “The fiftieth anniversary of the invention of basketball finds the game recognized as the world’s most popular sport…. I challenge anyone to read this book and feel anything but admiration and love for this great and simple character who devoted his life and efforts to education and earned the respect and gratitude of millions of athletes throughout the world. Doctor Naismith merits his place as one of the immortals in American education.”...

The news of Naismith’s death was broadcast around the world, and tributes began to pour in to Lawrence. Plans were made for his funeral, and his body was returned to the family home, where friends, colleagues, and former students paid their last respects.

Writing in theEmporia Gazettethe day after Naismith’s death, a renowned University of Kansas graduate, journalist William Allen White, wrote, “Here is a man who has done a real service to humanity…. What a privilege it must have been, what a satisfaction for him to realize that he had done something worthy, something to make people...