Basketball, perhaps the most American sport after baseball, was invented by a Canadian. James Naismith was born in Ontario, Canada and attended McGill University in Montreal (Talion 2010). Born and raised in Canada, James invented the game of basketball while living in the United States of America. More specifically, he was working at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts when he was assigned to create a new game by his boss, Dr. Luther Gulick. It seems that the students in his class had grown tired of other indoor games and were looking for something new. Dr. Gulick gave Naismith, then 30 years old, 2 weeks to come up with an idea. It was only the night before that James Naismith invented the origins of basketball (Wolff 2002). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay 13 rules were created and peach baskets from the basement were ascertained to serve as objectives. Naismith was tired of rough and tumble sports, so he requested that peach baskets be attached to the balcony 10 feet off the ground. This would prevent athletes from running towards the goal line, as commonly happens in rugby. On January 20, 1892, with nine players on each team and without running while holding the ball, the game began (Talion 2002). The first game was a huge success, and Naismith said, "The only difficulty I had was chasing them away at the hour mark." (Wolff 2002) One of the students, realizing that the game was going somewhere, actually stole the rules from the bulletin board. He eventually returned them to James stating, "I knew this game would be good, and I thought they would make a good souvenir, but I think you should have them." The same student, Frank Mahan, also suggested the name basketball for the new game (Wolff 2002). Those first rules hanging in the gym remained in the Naismith family, having been passed down from James to his son Jimmy. Jimmy recognized that the documents would be worth a lot and kept them safe. Ultimately, when the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame was created, rules were obviously desired. The rules were loaned to some sort of newly built museum but they did not display the original, only the copies were shown in the display case. The original pages were eventually returned to the Naismith family (Wolff 2002). Since its inception, basketball has undergone many changes and alterations leading to the game's current form. Perhaps the biggest change that occurred was the removal of the bottom of the peach baskets allowing the ball to fall freely through the cylinder. Some of the other key changes over the years have been the removal of the center jump, the design of a half-court line, the clock, the three-point line, and the widening of the foul lane (Weber 2006). they are familiar with the jump ball that occurs on center court at the start of a basketball game. In most cases, this is the only time such a thing occurs. However, a jump ball was administered after a team scored a basket. It's easy to see how this would disrupt the flow of the game and perhaps favor one team more than another. The design of the halfway line also helped regulate the pace of the game to make it more refined. Before it was established, many teams simply stopped trying to score when they took the lead. This led to a rather boring game. With the halfway line a 10 second time limit for bringing the ball onto the ground was introduced, making the game much more exciting (Weber 2006). Howard Hobson, a coach at Oregon and Yale, was 24/