James Naismith was born in 1861 near Almonte, Ontario, the son of John Naismith and Margaret Young, who were both born in Scotland. He was raised as a wee Scot, with all that would imply, but tragically, at the age of nine, lost both of his parents amid a typhoid fever epidemic. He was taken in by family, and within two years, he was left with his bachelor uncle Pete.
He quickly dropped out of high school in Almonte and started farming and lumbering, likely to help Uncle Pete with the bills. He soon developed a bit of a reputation as a drinker, but one day, as the family story goes, a man approached him at a bar where he was spending his just-earned paycheque and asked, “Are you Margaret Young’s son?” When he said yes, the man shook his head. “She’d roll over in her grave if she saw you now.”
At the age of 20, he decided to finish his high school degree, then he went to Montreal. The plan, after four years in physical education at McGill and three years at the Presbyterian Theological School, was to pursue the ministry. Instead, he decided to blend his two passions, looking to “win men for the Master” with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) school in Springfield, Massachusetts, applying in 1888.
There, in 1891, he was tasked with finding a salve to his “incorrigible” group of rowdy boys, pent up inside a snowed-up gymnasium. Armed with two peach baskets and a soccer ball, he established 13 rules, (lightly revised for safety after a couple of black eyes and an injured shoulder) and gave birth to basketball. His life is woven into the sport itself, right down to how he was inspired by his childhood game of duck on a rock. And it was through his deep faith that the game found its way into the lives of so many. Just one year later, Senda Berenson brought basketball to women’s liberal arts college Smith College, making basketball the first women’s team sport. Two years later, the YMCA movement – founded in London in 1844, and quickly spreading across the United States and Europe – lifted it to an international audience. Forty years later, he was handing out medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the first to feature basketball as a sport.
Today, the National Basketball Association is a multibillion-dollar business, and the sport is played by more the 300 million people around the world. But Naismith didn’t want any credit; he refused to patent the game. All he wanted was simple: “I would like the world to be a better place for my having been here.” All he’d care about, if he saw the game today, would be how the kids and the young people are doing. In some ways, this was his ministry.
Basketball may have been invented by a Canadian, but it touched lives around the world as much and as soon as it left that Canadian’s mind. And now, with the Larry O’Brien NBA Championship Trophy in Canada, where the Toronto Raptors have galvanized a country and inspired a generation of young Canadians, it’s finally home. I think if he was around today to hear that, he’d smile and say, “Well, how about that.”
