James Naismith (/ˈneɪsmɪθ/ NAY-smith; November 6, 1861 – November 28, 1939) was a Canadian physical educator, physician, Christian chaplain, and sports coach, best known as the inventor of the game of basketball.
While originally developing the game of basketball in Canada, after moving to the United States, he wrote the original basketball rule book and founded the University of Kansas basketball program in 1898. Naismith lived to see basketball adopted as an Olympic demonstration sport in 1904 and as an official event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, as well as the birth of the National Invitation Tournament (1938) and the NCAA Tournament (1939). He would also live to see the creation of one half of the leagues that eventually became the present day National Basketball Association with the original existence of the Midwest Basketball Conference in 1935 before it became the National Basketball League in 1937.