Surprising: the first basketball baskets were two baskets of peaches

An unpublished recording of the interview conducted in 1939 with the considered father of basketball, James Naismith, reveals the curiosities of the beginnings of this sport.

James Naismith is considered the father of basketball, who had the idea of using two baskets of peaches that he hung at each end of the gym where he trained with some schoolchildren for a game that consisted of putting a ball into the "basket" of the rival team. That was the first basketball game in history.
It happened in the Gymnasium of the YMCA Training School (today known as Springfield College) in Springfield on December 15, 1891 (precisely today marks 124 years of that anniversary) and resulted in the invention of basketball.
All this can be known today thanks to Dr. Michael J. Zogry, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Indigenous Studies at the University of Kansas, who has made a unique discovery: a radio interview with James Naismith, performed by the WOR-AM network and donated to the US Library of Congress by RKO. Zogry has obtained permission to broadcast this recording and use it for educational purposes, as reported by the New York Times.
This is the only recording of James Naismith's voice, so its value is incalculable. It lasts about three minutes and corresponds to the program “We the people” recorded in New York with Gabriel Heatter as announcer. Naismith, who had gone to see basketball live at Madison Square Garden, talks in this interview about that wonderful idea of using two peach baskets to dunk a ball and which resulted in the invention of basketball. More than eighty years ago, Naismith was displeased with the evolution of the sport he invented, railing against zone defenses.

The first match: a “massacre”

In the interview, James Naismith states that “I showed them (the young people present in the gym) the two baskets for peaches that I had hung at each end of the gym and I told them that the idea was to throw and put the ball in the team's basket contrary. “I grabbed a whistle and the first basketball game in history began.” But it was not a peaceful or idyllic match: “the players began kicking and punching each other and ended up in a free-for-all in a scrum in the middle of the gym.” The game ended with bruises, black eyes, a dislocated shoulder and even an unconscious player. “That was a massacre,” says Naismith.

The first rules of the game, the result of experience

Given the result, James Naismith changed some of the rules seeking the development of a cleaner sport. This is how Naismith's original third rule was introduced: A player cannot run while holding the ball; The player must pass or shoot at the basket from the place where he catches it, unless he catches it while running but has to stop. In this way, it is refuted that the thirteen rules established by Naismith were created at the same time, but rather that they were refined after the first experiences.