The Great Read: Who Really Invented Basketball? The ‘Human Calculator’ Thinks He Knows.
The official story is that Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in Springfield, Mass., in 1891. But what about the teenager tossing cabbages in upstate New York a year earlier?
The New York Times
The Great Read

June 17, 2025, 2:01 p.m. Eastern time

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Scott Flansburg, earing a blue polo shirt, gray pants and white sneakers, sits on a stoop on an empty sidewalk.

Patrick Dodson for The New York Times

Who Really Invented Basketball? The ‘Human Calculator’ Thinks He Knows.

The official story is that Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in Springfield, Mass., in 1891. But what about the teenager tossing cabbages in upstate New York a year earlier?

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