Nais-MYTH: Basketball's Stolen Legacy

Updated Second Edition (2025):After reviewing all the facts, in 2024, the State of New York passed legislation recognizing Herkimer, NY native Lambert Will and not James Naismith as the inventor of basketball. By doing so, it has brought increased focus on a decades-long debate about the sport's 'true' inventor. This updated edition includes the latest developments in the efforts to correct one of history's biggest lies.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 theVillage 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 namedLambert Will, who was a volunteer director of the local Y.M.C.A. andwho invented the game of Basketballwhile 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., La