Man Who Invented the Game of Basketball: The Genius of James Naismith

Genius at Work! Great Inventor Biographies

by Edwin Brit Wyckoff

Dr. James Naismith was a Canadian-American sports coach and innovator. He invented the sport of basketball in 1891 and is often credited with introducing the first football helmet. He wrote the original basketball rulebook, founded the University of Kansas basketball program, and lived to see basketball adopted as an Olympic demonstration sport in 1904 and as an official event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, as well as the birth of both the National Invitation Tournament (1938) and the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship (1939).

Genres: Sports, Biography, Nonfiction

50 pages, ebook

First published July 1, 2007

Reviews

[John Zuklie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is m biography book and taught me all I need to know about James Naismith for my presentation.

[Sofian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book “The man who invented the game of basketball” is a book (by the title) talks about how the sport game basketball was invented. More specifically the man who invented the famous sport basketball. The man who invented the game was called James Naismith, James was eleven when he started enjoying playing sports more specifically a game called “duck on a rock” he loved playing sports and he did not like studying and one day he became a teacher in the YMCA or Young Men’s Christian Association he was really good at teaching baseball, field hockey, football, and rugby. Everything was great except when winter came around and it was so cold that they would have to play outside. People were so bored they wanted to leave the YMCA so James was told to invent an exciting indoor game and he had only two weeks and that was the deadline. James tried very hard to get a game but he could not find one but after twelve days of thinking he came out with the idea of basketball people liked the idea so they got a soccer ball and then changed it to a basketball and later after all that there was still more history for basketball.

“The man who invented basketball” was an amazing book that talks about the invention of the basketball game it all started by one man that had the name James Naismith it talks about the inventor’s life and how he enjoyed sports. Even though basketball looked like an easy game that would pop up in your head it was not that easy for James, at the time James was in the YMCA working as a teacher and he loved it there but when winter came around not everybody was happy people became so bored the wanted to leave so James thought of a game and it took him twelve days to find the game which is crazy when it comes from something from one man to now something that blew up and is popping up everywhere in the world. Anyway aside from all that I think this book was very interesting and I would recommend this book to anybody who would like to learn about the origins of Basketball.

[Cindy Dobrez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've heard the peach basket basketball origin story a thousand times, but I hadn't heard that Naismith based the game on a memory of playing "duck on a rock" as a kid. One player would put a fist sized rock on a bigger rock and the boys threw stones at it to knock it off and avoid the guard to get their rock back if they missed. There are lots of nice archival photos of Naismith and early basketball memorabilia in this easy to read biography. One photo of Naismith's gymnastics team makes me glad I get to watch the muscular guys who compete now on my large HDTV instead of his Rubanesque colleagues. ;)

[LauraW · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has more content than the book about basketball I reviewed a few days ago: Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball, which is nice. It is definitely an older style of book, though: more text, lots of old time photos. Hoop Genius would make a better read-aloud; this book would make a better "read to self" book. It isn't as exciting as Hoop Genius, but there is more to think about.

[Rose]

92 Nai

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was 4 my science fair paper and it rocked!

[Jasmine]

i love it it's a really great story.