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James Naismith

File:Dr._James_Naismith.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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James Naismith

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Also known as Narmal, James "Doc" Naismith, Doc Naismith

Canadian-American coach; inventor of basketball

OverviewAI-generated

James Naismith (1861–1939) was a Canadian and American inventor, basketball coach, writer, and cleric. Born in Almonte and deceased in Lawrence, he was educated at McGill University and Springfield College. Naismith served as an employee at McGill University and the University of Kansas, where he coached the Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball team. He was a Catholic who spoke and wrote in English.

As an author, Naismith published works including *Basket Ball - Its Origin And Development*, *Basketball's origins*, *Rules for basket ball*, and *Basketball*. His contributions to the sport of basketball were recognized with inductions into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and the FIBA Hall of Fame.

Synthesized by Vinony from 29 facts across 5 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born
1861
Died
1939
Works
4

Top works

  • Basket Ball - Its Origin And Development
  • Basketball's origins
  • Rules for basket ball
  • Basketball

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Active from
1963

via MusicBrainz · CC0

~27 min read

Encyclopedic overview

James Naismith (/ˈneɪsmɪθ/ 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). He also lived to see the creation of half of the leagues that eventually became the present-day National Basketball Association, with the 1935 creation of the Midwest Basketball Conference before it became the National Basketball League in 1937.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “James Naismith” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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