Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, practices the game in its original form - with a peach basket and soccer ball - with his wife, Maude, in Lawrence, Kansas, on December 2, 1928.
Naismith devised the game of basketball in 1891 while a member of the faculty of Y.M.C.A. College in Springfield, now Springfield College. The Times wrote, "The original rules were typed and handed to young Springfield students, who at first considered the new game as 'just another sport,' but after a time grew very fond of it and played well."
In a radio interview in 1939, Naismith reminisced about the first game and the melee that broke out: "I showed them two peach baskets I'd nailed up at each end of the gym, and I told them the idea was to throw the ball into the opposing team's peach basket. I blew a whistle, and the first game of basketball began." But "the boys began tackling, kicking and punching in the clinches," Naismith said. "They ended up in a free-for-all in the middle of the gym floor." To stop the brawling, Naismith changed some of the rules as part of his quest to develop a clean sport.
"The most important one was that there should be no running with the ball," he said, referring to what became the third of his 13 rules. "That stopped tackling and slugging. We tried out the game with those rules, and we didn't have one casualty."
This photo was published in the Pictorial section of The Times on December 9, 1928. Naismith died at age 78 on November 28, 1939.
