11/06/2025
🏀 Happy National Basketball Day! 🏀
More than 130 years ago, the game was born at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts.
In 1891, James Naismith—a clergyman and YMCA instructor there—was asked to come up with an “indoor athletic distraction” to keep students active during the cold winter months.
He had been assigned a group of young men completely uninterested in exercise. So his solution? Two peach baskets, a soccer ball, and a brand-new game we now know as basketball.
In the early games, it was mostly a passing game—dribbling was introduced later on. And because the baskets still had their bottoms, every shot made had to be retrieved with a ladder!
Before long, Naismith’s 13 original rules were posted in the gym, and the game spread quickly from YMCAs to college campuses.
Soon after, those peach baskets were replaced with iron “hammock-style” nets—and the rest is history.
Even early NBA legends like Wilt Chamberlain, Christian Laettner, and Cliff Robinson got their start at the YMCA before turning pro!
Fun Fact: When basketball was invented, Omaha’s YMCA sent a delegation of men to Kansas to learn the game and then organized a team, which swept away most of the opposition in the Midwest.
