History of Basketball Who is known world-wide as the inventor of basketball? His name is Dr. James Naismith, he was born in 1861 in Almonte, Ontario. Most people wonder were a young man would think of a game like basketball. The concept of basketball was born from his school days in the area where he played a simple child's game known as duck-on-a-rock outside his one-room schoolhouse. The game involved attempting to knock a "duck" off the top of a large rock by tossing another rock at it. Naismith went on to attend McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. In 1891 (after serving as McGill's Ath