Nais-MYTH: Basketball's Stolen Legacy

OVERVIEW: For over seventy years an ongoing, and at times heated and emotional, debate over the origins of Basketball has persisted. Though the official historical records state the game was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian educator from Almonte, Ontario who was teaching at Springfield YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, there are those who believe otherwise. Counter to the Naismith narrative, the research and development of this book provide irrefutable evidence of the game being played a year earlier in the Village of Herkimer, New York, as well as across other small communities of New York State’s Mohawk Valley. This book heralds that the game’s origins should be credited to a 16-year-old first-generation Austrian-American boy named Lambert Will, who was a volunteer director of the local Y.M.C.A. and who invented the game of Basketball while tossing cabbages into peach baskets in a root cellar and later at a local General Store in 1890.BACKGROUND / BACK-STORY: During the decade of the 1950s, while efforts were underway to establish the Dr. James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, a bitter war-of-words pitting proponents of Dr. Naismith against those of Lambert Will raged. In the end, the Naismith side, having garnered the support of some within the national media, along with corporate sponsors, major sports organizations, and individuals within professional and collegiate basketball circles, won out. The Dr. James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame officially opened in Springfield in 1959, with no mention of Herkimer, N.Y., Lambert Will, nor the debate preceding the site's construction. In the eyes of the Dr. James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and its supporters, the debate was over and their version of history, with Naismith as the game's inventor, was cemented in the annals of history.In the years since, the Herkimer claims and accusations have failed to go away, and the initial evidence has remained a constant thorn-in-the-side of mainstream historians and traditionalists who prefer to promote the Naismith storyline and/or have profited from the Hall of Fame, Naismith’s 13 Basketball Rules document, and the selective branding and promotion of basketball’s origins history.For many Herkimer and Lambert Will supporters, having basketball's creation credited to Springfield and Dr. James Naismith is akin to a stolen legacy and a disservice to the historical record. These critics of the Springfield and ‘Nais-Myth’ narrative view the Herkimer-Springfield basketball debate as one that demands resolution, and this book is the historical analysis that demands a verdict; and the verdict is to correct the official record by proving that it was Lambert Will who invented Basketball, and the Village of Herkimer, with the support of surrounding communities, that formed the game of Basketball.HISTORIC AND GROUND-BREAKING FINDINGSFrom 1890 through 1893, the game of basketball spread along a fixed route, across the four states of New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. This ‘Basketball Road’ began in Herkimer and moved east to Little Falls, Amsterdam, Albany, Troy, Holyoke, and eventually Springfield. It also moved west to Mohawk, Ilion, Utica, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Rochester ending at Cornell University, and the University of Rochester... Read more