At the time, James Naismith (1861-1939) worked as a gymnastic teacher at the YMCA School (Young Men’s Christian Association) in Springfield (not confused with the protagonists of the The Simpson series); in the United States.

Naismith was commissioned: Invent an activity that students could do in the hostel to protect themselves from the cold of winter and keep fit. Soon a soccer ball with two baskets to store peaches and thirteen game rules appeared in the gym. He hung the front baskets on the walls of the pavilion, ten feet from the ground; even today, the baskets are 3.05 meters from the ground. The rules stipulated that two teams of nine players would face in two halves of fifteen minutes, with an intermediate break of five minutes.

But school officials also asked the gymnastics teacher that the new sport wasn't violent. And at least in the first match, Naismith failed to meet the condition. Several players ended up bleeding or with an amorphous eye, one dislocated on his shoulders and another lost his knowledge.

In these thirteen original rules, the creator of the sport had defined the conditions to communicate the lack to the players or to expel them from the playing field, but it was not enough to avoid nursing. After the match he decided to change rule 3, as he had asked him, to reduce contact between the players as far as possible. “Players can’t run with the ball in their hand,” says rule 3. From now on, this phrase reduced the playoff and bumps on the first day, and set the style and movements of the new sport around the pump. Reducing the number of players to almost half also helped to ease competition.