basketball's affects on american society

The Effect of the Invention of Basketball on American Society For those who do not consider themselves basketball fans, the sport’s significance may seem irrelevant or of very little. While these people may not think to thank Dr. James Naismith for his invention of the game, we should all thank him for the major contributions he made and paths he paved for this country. Although basketball may be seen as just a sport played for fun and enjoyment, its invention’s impact on Americans was huge, positive, and everlasting. The inventor himself had a very strange and rough road to get to that infamous winter night that the game was created. James Naismith wasn’t born in your ideal view of a basketball setting, but in Canada. Both his mother and father passed away of typhoid fever before he had turned nine years old. James then moved in with his uncle in Springfield, Massachusetts, terribly overwhelmed and distressed. He dropped out of school at the age of fifteen because he saw “no need in learning more than he already knew” (Hill 9). If Naismith would have actually gone along with this way of thinking, the journey to the invention of basketball could have ended right then and there. In fact, the only reason Naismith ever went to college was that his uncle wanted him to become a minister. He went on to attend Presbyterian College, where the invention was a great case of serendipity. While he was there, there were no sports being played between football and baseball season due to the cold weather. He noticed athletes were bored and as he would later write, he was “just trying to find a solution to a problem” (Hill 7). This indoor game played with peach baskets soon exploded in popularity and the rest was history. In the mid-1800s a majority, if not all, of American culture was adopted from another country. Baseball was being played, which was derived from the English game of cricket. The sport of lacrosse was learned from the Native Americans. We even cooked like