History of Basketball Dr. James Naismith is known world-wide as the inventor of basketball .

He is a Canadian clergyman, educator and physician and was born in 1861 in Ramsay township, near Almonte, Ontario, Canada. Basketball was invented in December 1891. The concept of basketball was born from Naismith's school days in the area where he played a simple child's game known as duck-on-a-rock outside his one-room schoolhouse. The game involved attempting to knock a "duck" off the top of a large rock by tossing another rock at it. Naismith introduced basketball when he was an instructor at the Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusettes. At the request of his superior, Dr. Luther H. Gulick, he organized a vigorous recreation suitable for indoor winter play. James Naismith devised a set of thirteen rules of basketball. Today basketball has grown to become one of the world's most popular sports. It is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules. Basketball is one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports.