While a coach at Kansas, Naismith coached Phog Allen, who later became the coach at Kansas for 39 seasons, beginning a lengthy and prestigious coaching tree. He then arrived at the University of Kansas, later becoming the Kansas Jayhawks' athletic director and coach. Seven years after inventing basketball, Naismith received his medical degree in Denver in 1898. Naismith studied and taught physical education at McGill University in Montreal until 1890 before moving to Springfield, Massachusetts, United States later that year, where in 1891 he designed the game of basketball while he was teaching at the International YMCA Training School. 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). After moving to the United States, he wrote the original basketball rule book and founded the University of Kansas basketball program.
James Naismith ( NAY-smith November 6, 1861 – November 28, 1939) was a Canadian-American physical educator, physician, Christian chaplain, and sports coach, best known as the inventor of the game of basketball.
