The hoop genius is James Naismith, a high school gym teacher, with a class of rowdy boys that no one wanted.  Naismith tried all sorts of games but to no avail.  His boys were beat up and bandaged from the physicality of the games.  Until one day he remembered a game from his own childhood in which the target was up in the air and the player had to accurate throw a rock to knock it off its stand.  Instead of a rock he used a soccer ball.  He used an actual basket for the target and he instituted fouls for pushing, tripping and holding.  If a player had two fouls they had to sit on the bench.  The popularity of the game spread nationwide and worldwide.

Students enjoyed hearing how basketball got started.  However, it was the illustrations which threw them off.  They thought the students looked too old to be students, they had mustaches and facial hair.  In looking at the original photograph of the gym class that’s at the back of the book, they do, in fact, have mustaches and do look older than high school students.  The illustrator used the photograph to make accurate illustrations.