Travel in Time with Dan — Episode 54: A Fictional Interview with Dr. James Naismith, the Father of Basketball
Travel in Time with Dan | New Britain YMCA, New Britain, Connecticut
⚠️ Author’s Note: The following is a fictional historical interview. Dr. James Naismith (1861–1939) was a Canadian-American physical education instructor who invented the game of basketball in December 1891 at Springfield College in Massachusetts. His original 13 rules — which explicitly forbade dribbling — were later purchased by the University of Kansas, where they remain on display today. Players at the New Britain YMCA discovered a loophole in those rules, inventing the “self-pass” that eventually evolved into the modern dribble. By 1898, rules formally allowed a single self-pass, and by 1901, the continuous dribble was officially recognized, transforming basketball into the game the world loves today. This imagined conversation takes place at the New Britain YMCA, sometime after Naismith has heard about what the players here have been doing with his rules. The historical facts are real. The dialogue is creative fiction, inspired by Naismith’s documented writings, his philosophy of sport, and his famously humble and principled character.
📍 Setting: The gymnasium of the New Britain YMCA, Connecticut — the mid-1890s. The gym smells of sawdust and effort. A peach basket is nailed to the elevated running track above, exactly as Naismith once envisioned it. The man himself is standing near the baseline, watching the players run through their drills with an expression that is difficult to read. It’s somewhere between curiosity and mild concern. He is a compact, serious-looking man with kind eyes and the patient bearing of someone who has spent his life in gymnasiums and believes in them deeply. He turns as I approach, and his handshake is firm and genuine.
Dan: Dr. Naismith, thank you for coming to New Britain. I understand you’ve been watching the players here for a little while this morning.
Naismith: (Nodding slowly, glancing back at the court)
I have. It is quite something to watch. Not entirely what I had in mind when I wrote the rules, I will say that plainly. But quite something nonetheless.
Dan: Let’s start at the beginning. Springfield College, 1891. What problem were you actually trying to solve when you invented basketball?
Naismith: (A warm smile, the memory clearly a fond one)
A very practical problem, as most good ideas begin. The students at Springfield had no suitable activity for the winter months. They were restless indoors, and the existing gymnasium exercises bored them thoroughly. And frankly, bored me as well. I needed something that could be played indoors, that required genuine skill and teamwork, and that was vigorous enough to satisfy young men who wanted real competition.
I nailed two peach baskets to the elevated track. They were ten feet up, as they remain today. Then, I wrote thirteen rules over the course of roughly an hour. The first game ended one to nothing. (A quiet laugh) It was not exactly the spectacle you see today.
Dan: Rule number three of those original thirteen said no dribbling. No moving with the ball at all. Why was that so central to your vision?
Naismith: (With gentle but clear conviction)
Because I designed basketball as a team game. A passing game. The whole point was that no single player could dominate by simply running past everyone else. The ball had to move through cooperation — through reading your teammates, through trust. That was not an accident or an oversight. That was the philosophy of the game made into a rule.
(A pause, another glance toward the players)
A philosophy these gentlemen here have found rather negotiable, it seems.
Dan: That’s exactly what I want to ask you about. The players at this YMCA found a loophole. They called it the “self-pass” in throwing the ball to the ground and running to meet it where it lands. The referees were furious. But the rule book didn’t forbid it. How did you feel when you first heard about it?
Naismith: (A long pause, choosing his words carefully)
Honestly? My first feeling was that they were violating the spirit of what I had created, even if they were not technically violating the letter of it. I spent a good deal of time on those thirteen rules. I thought carefully about each one. To have players immediately begin looking for gaps in them felt, I will admit, like a kind of disrespect for the intention behind the work.
Dan: But?
Naismith: (The faintest smile)
But I have also spent my entire career watching young people find ways to make physical games more exciting than the men who designed them ever imagined. And I have learned… slowly, and not always comfortably… that that is not something to resist. That is something to pay attention to.
Dan: Let me press you on that. The New Britain players were essentially told by the referees that what they were doing violated the spirit of your game. And they pushed back. They said: show me where the rulebook forbids it. Was that the right thing to do?
Naismith: (Sitting with the question for a genuine moment)
That is a harder question than it might appear.
On one hand, I believe in rules. I believe that games without clear rules descend into chaos, and that the discipline of operating within an agreed framework is itself part of what sport teaches us. So the instinct to say “the referees are right, follow the spirit of the thing”… I understand that instinct. I share it.
On the other hand… (looking at the players again, watching a man bounce the ball, move, catch it, create an angle) …if the rule does not actually forbid something, and that something makes the game genuinely better… opens it up, creates more movement and skill and excitement… then perhaps the rule needed to be challenged. Perhaps the rule was incomplete. And the honest answer is that a rule being mine does not make it above improvement.
(Quietly)
That is not an easy thing to say. But I think it is true.
Dan: So the New Britain, CT, players were right.
Naismith: (A measured nod)
The New Britain players were innovators. Whether they were right depends on what you think games are for. If you think games exist to honor the intentions of the men who designed them, then perhaps not. If you think games exist to produce the highest possible expression of human skill and teamwork and competition… (Watching a player execute a smooth bounce and drive toward the basket) …then yes. I think they were right. I think what is happening in this gymnasium is making basketball better. I can see it with my own eyes, and I am not too proud to say so.
Dan: There is a debate about which place truly deserves to be called the cradle of basketball. Springfield has you, the origin of the game, and the Hall of Fame. Kansas University has the original thirteen rules on display. And New Britain has this — the invention of dribbling. How do you see it?
Naismith: (A gentle laugh)
I think basketball is fortunate to have three places willing to argue about it so passionately. That is not a bad problem for a game to have.
Springfield is where the game was born, and I am proud of that. Kansas holds the rules, and I am glad they are preserved and honored there. But I will tell you this honestly: the game that was born in Springfield, played under the rules now at Kansas, looks very little like what you see when you watch these young men play here in New Britain at the YMCA. What happened in this gymnasium… this self-pass, this running, this evolution toward what they are now calling dribbling… changed the game more fundamentally than almost anything else in its short history.
You could argue, and I would not argue back very hard, that basketball became basketball here. Not because Naismith was here, but because the game finally became what it was always capable of being.
Dan: That is a generous thing to say about people who found holes in your rulebook.
Naismith: (Standing, watching the court one final time)
I invented a game. These players made it worth watching. A man ought to be grateful for that, not resentful. The original thirteen rules were a beginning. Beginnings are supposed to be improved upon. That is rather the point of them.
(Turning back with genuine warmth)
Besides, if the game had stayed exactly as I designed it… stationary passing, one to nothing, peach baskets with the bottoms still in them so someone had to climb up and retrieve the ball after every score… I am not entirely certain we would still be talking about it today.
Dan: Last question, Dr. Naismith. People will visit this gymnasium, and Springfield, and Kansas for generations, trying to understand where basketball really came from. What do you want them to take away?
Naismith: (Simply, without any grandeur)
I want them to understand that the best things human beings create are never finished. I wrote thirteen rules in an hour to solve a winter problem at a gymnasium in Massachusetts. I did not write the final word on anything. The players here did not write the final word either. The game will keep evolving… it will become things neither I nor these New Britain players could fully imagine… and that is exactly as it should be.
The leader’s job, in sport and in everything else, is not to protect their original idea from improvement. It is to give the world something worth improving. If I did that, then whatever happens next on a basketball court is something I can be proud of, even when it looks nothing like what I first imagined.
(Nodding toward the court)
Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe I would like to watch a little more of what these young men are doing with my rules. I find I am considerably less bothered by it than I was an hour ago.
Dr. Naismith stood at the edge of that New Britain gymnasium for a long time, watching players bounce and chase and move in ways his original thirteen rules never anticipated and could not entirely contain. By 1898, one self-pass would be officially permitted. By 1901, the continuous dribble would be written into the rules. And from there, the road runs straight to every crossover, every fast break, and every gravity-defying drive to the hoop you have ever watched and loved.
Springfield gave us the game. Kansas preserved its origins. New Britain made it worth watching.
The leadership lesson lives in that New Britain gym, in the moment a group of players looked at a rule and asked the question that every true innovator eventually asks: can this be better? They were called pains in the neck by the referees. They were told they were violating the spirit of the game. They pushed back anyway… not out of disrespect, but out of a genuine belief that the game was capable of more than it was currently being allowed to be.
They were right. And a man humble enough to admit that his own rules needed improving… even when those rules were his life’s work… turned out to be one of the most important things James Naismith ever did.
Great leaders don’t just follow rules. They ask whether the rules are serving the game as well as they could. And sometimes, the answer changes everything. 🏀
Travel in Time with Dan is where travel, history, and leadership come together. Uncovering History. Inspiring Leadership.
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