Basketball Inventor James Naismith Discusses 1st Game in Newly Released Audio

Michael Zogry, a University of Kansas researcher, has found the only known audio recording of Dr. James Naismith discussing the game of basketball, the school announced Tuesday. 

Naismith, who invented the sport, can be heard in the brief snippet describing the organization of the sport's first game in 1891. Of course, the initial iteration is far different than the sport we see today. Naismith famously used peach baskets for hoops, and the game featured 18 total players rather than the traditional 10. 

Naismith used that experience to create some of the fundamental rules of basketball that still exist. While of Naismith's original 13 have been changed or altered over the last 124 years, the audio offers important context into his process.

"I didn't have enough (rules), and that's where I made my big mistake," Naismith said of the initial game, per the press release. 

Zogry found the audio, which is from a 1939 radio program titled We the People, while searching in the archives of the Library of Congress. The recording happened just 10 months before Naismith's death.

"The recording suggests the gym was a laboratory for developing the game and establishing the rules," Zogry said in the press release. "There's also value in just hearing his voice. In this day and age of media saturation, to find something like this is surprising.  No one's heard his voice in over 75 years. When we hear him talking, we get a sense of his demeanor and his self-effacing attitude." 

Naismith, of course, was not just basketball's inventor. He spent most of his life as Kansas' director of physical education, also serving as the school's athletic director and basketball coach. Zogry found the clip while doing research for his book, Religion and Basketball: Naismith's Game, which examines Naismith's profound religion and what inventing basketball meant for his life.

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