James Naismith

Inventor of basketball (1861–1939)

James Naismith ( NAY-smith; November 6, 1861 – November 28, 1939) was a Canadian-American physical educator, physician, Christian chaplain, and sports coach, best known as the inventor of the game of basketball. First developing the game in Canada, he wrote the original basketball rule book after moving to the United States and founded the University of Kansas basketball program in 1898. Naismith lived to see basketball adopted as an Olympic demonstration sport in 1904 and as an official event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, and to see the birth of the National Invitation Tournament (1938) and the NCAA Tournament (1939).

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