Jim understood all about being bored indoors during the winter. A native of Ontario, he’d received his education at McGill University in Montreal, where he graduated with a degree in physical fitness. He grew frustrated about being cooped up week after week during the long Canadian winters. After working at his alma mater for a bit, James migrated south to Springfield, Massachusetts, and began a career teaching young men about staying physically fit at Springfield College. But, like the weather in his home of Canada, winters in Springfield meant that young people had to stay for weeks indoors, and, frankly, the options for indoor games were pretty limited.

So after Jim complained to his boss at the school about his students’ increasing frustration about being house-bound in the harsh winter weather, the head of the school gave Jim a challenge: He had two weeks to create a game that would interest the young men and meet the needs to keep them active in the winter months. Also, Jim’s boss added, this new game that Jim had been tasked with creating must give the school’s track team a decent work out. Jim left the meeting wishing that he’d not said anything at all.

Two weeks. Jim worried that he needed more time, but he sat down at his desk every night for the first few days of those weeks and did a short inventory of the sports that were popular during that time. He made a list of all the balls used in games. He analyzed the contact that each sport had. He listed the equipment required by each sport. After a few long nights of making these lists and thinking about them, here’s what Jim came up with.

First, he didn’t want much contact indoors on a wooden gym floor. Next, he realized that the softest ball was a soccer ball, and so he chose that to be the main equipment. He didn’t want any other specialized uniform or protection, so he wanted something that the boys could play in their normal gym attire. He also realized that sports that required the guarding of some goal often led to contact and, sometimes, altercations and violence. Those were to be avoided, Jim thought.

So, how would be have a goal for the ball and for the players to achieve that didn’t need to be defended in the usual sense? It finally hit him: He needed to elevate the goal. He asked his boss for two poles that he could make the goals high up off the floor, but the school didn’t have any of those. Maybe he could put the goals on the railings that were above the gym floor on either end.

Then, he turned to a janitor named Stubbins, a man who had worked at the school for many years, and asked him to find him a couple of boxes. The janitor shrugged and told Jim he couldn’t promise he’d find anything, but he agreed to look around the facility. About an hour later, the janitor came back into the gym. “Hey, Doc,” he said (Stubbins had a habit of calling everyone “Doc”), ” Didn’t get you no boxes. Sorry. Will these do?”

Jim saw that while no suitable boxes could be found, the janitor had managed to scrounge up a couple of bushel baskets. Jim smiled. “Yes!” he said, excitedly. “They’re even better than boxes. Thanks, Mr Stubbins.”

Well, you know the rest of this story. James Naismith secured those baskets to the end railings in the gym that day in 1891. And he named his new game Basket Ball.

But, if not for Mr. Stubbins, we might be cheering for our favorite teams in the National Boxball Association today.