Naismith vs Camp: One Nailed a Peach Basket, One Built a Billion-Dollar Machine
JAMES NAISMITH vs WALTER CAMP go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.
I hung two peach baskets in a Springfield gym to keep restless boys busy through winter, and asked only that they not hurt each other.
Charming, but I codified the down, the line of scrimmage, the scoring system - I turned a schoolyard scrum into a national spectacle with rules that endure.
You built a machine of collisions; I built a game so simple a child anywhere could play it, and now billions do without a single yard of turf.
And yet the arenas you fill, the fortunes and the fame - those are the very grandstands I taught America to build; you invented the sport, but I invented the spectacle.
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