September 19, 2023 • 40 mins
These days basketball is a billion dollar cultural phenomenon -- but where did it come from? In the first part of this week's series, Ben, Noel and Max explore the origins of basketball, starting with the moment a young James Naismith was asked to distract a bunch of "incorrigible" students during the winter months.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's have a shout out for our
super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hip to the hot that you're a little ball. I
don't know what that was, but I'm talking about basketball.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Nailed it, nailed it. I'm Ben your Noel. Noel, what
do you think of when you think of basketball?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Oh? I think of incorrigibles that I think of them,
what cannot be tamed, you know, the spirit of sporting,
chance and excitement and dribbling and hip. To top of
the thing that Max said.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I think of all my stubbed fingers because I play.
I believe you wouldn't believe it because I'm not the
world's tallest guy. But I was actually pretty good at
basketball my younger days because I had I had a
lot of fight in me.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I think it's a misnomer that you have to be tall.
It definitely makes you, gives you an edge, but I
mean you can. Aren't there some like famous short shorties.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Like short like Steph Curry Trey Young who are both
taller than all three of us.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
And we'll talk about why. Right, we'll talk about why
that happened along the way. This week, we're excited to
explore the history of basketball. And guess what, folks, even
if you're not a you know, a sports ball person,
if you don't care too much about basketball, you're still
gonna enjoy this. Noel and I were talking, there's some
(01:49):
there's some ridiculousness.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
To say, your granddad's history of basketball, right right, And
if unless your granddad was was a guy by the
name of James Naysmith, Yeah, and so was born in
the eighteen hundreds and born probably would be more like
a great grand point great.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So I want to thank James Nasmith for enabling a
young Ben bowl in to you know, despite being short,
I was like Spider Man doing parkour drunk. I was
all over the place. You know, it's weird that I
still have ten fingers. But thank you, James. Let's learn
a little bit more about you, mister Nasmith. This is
(02:22):
something we said right before we started recording. You kind
of have to be a little bit eccentric to wake
up one day and say I'm gonna make us sports.
That's right.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
And by the way, no relation to Mike Naysmith from
The Monkeys, who was also a little bit eccentric, true
and maybe didn't invent a sport, but did single handedly
invent rock and roll.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Hey, hey, they're the Monkeys, that's true.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
They monkey around sometimes. I actually need to watch that show.
So there's a podcast that I really like call with
Gorley and Rush. They talk about gently talk about horror movies,
and they were saying how some of The Monkeys' sketches
in their TV show are like Tim and Eric level
weird and absurd. Yes, and I I need that in
my life. And actually, I think the Monkeys get unfairly
maligned as sort of this like fake band, but they
(03:06):
actually had some really good tunes as well.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I feel like it's so easy to criticize something when
you're not making something as well, you know what I mean,
Like I'm a Believer is a bop.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
But even some of their deeper cuts, and there's some
of their albums that are like a little more experimental anyway,
again different Nasmith spelled differently even not sure why I
brought it up. Now I know why, because we're fans
of Tangents here on Ridiculous systems.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Oh, Last Train to Clarksville. I you know, I love people.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
The Kinks.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
They they did Last Train in Clarksville. The Monkeys did well.
The Kinks do. The Kinks do it. Maybe it's a cover.
I didn't think I didn't think it was. Yeah, Last
Train in Clarksville is by the Monkeys.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Really, Kinks do a great Last Train to Clarksville. Nice,
very cool.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
It's I mean, everybody loves It's a bop. I had,
really I had a parody version of it. I would
play called Last Train to Hateville and it was about
being late to the airport anyway. That's where the airport
is here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'll bring us back
from the Tangent. Sorry, I'm idiot.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
The Kinks did not do Last trin the clark so
they get a song called Last of the Steam Powered Trains.
We need to make a train train related guys.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
This is going to be a weird couple of weeks
for us because we're we've got announcements, we've got some housekeeping.
Noll your head into Detroit, max your head now in October.
I'm heading somewhere in October. And then before that we're
we're hitting Vegas, hitting the strip.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
We're hitting the strip. We're gonna fear and loathe our
way through that city of lights.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
At our boss beat me here, Max, our boss can
keeps roasting me for being excited about seeing the Hoover
dam Anyway, whatever, it's a marvel of engineering, it really is.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I mean, I mean, I wish I could come to
be that company with you, because I'm assuming you're going
by yourself, right, Ben, I.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Rented a car. I think it'll be a thig where
we'll see who wants to come. I want to come. Yeah, yeah, okay, awesome, Yes,
then please come. Damn me up, fam. That's okay. That
explains that text message. Okay, it was about the whover
NIS was okay. So this is an epic tangent for us,
but we've got a lot of stuff going on worth it, man,
you think I think you know.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You come for the history, you stay for the Tangents,
or you leave in a fit of rage for the Tangents.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Take the last train to Tangents exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
So.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
James Naysmith, he's a guy. Yeah that that.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
James Naysmith was a real kooky character. He was a
second year grad student who was essentially put in charge
of a physical education program.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Before this was like a thing.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I don't even think they called it kinesiology at the time.
That was like sort of when I learned about that,
I guess health class whatever. They always called it. The
study of kinesiology, I think is named after like the
the Father of of health, which isn't which isn't God. Surprisingly,
it's it's some some dude named Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yes, he's basically pee teacher, that's right, right, is a
younger pee teacher and another teacher, one of his colleagues,
was saying, you know, we've got an issue here, Jimmy,
which is, you know, you can have the kids out
running in circles or you know, frolicking when it's warm
outside during the summer in the autumn of the spring,
(06:24):
but we need a game to keep them active in
the winter months. Now, James, being a Canadian, he's about
thirty years old now, he's familiar with sports that are
popular in Canada. He's familiar with cold weather, and so
he says, all right, I'm gonna take a little bit
from rugby, a little bit of lacrosse, and then a
(06:45):
little bit from a game that I've never heard of
duck on a rock? Duck on a rock? Have you
heard of this? No?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I assume it's like dope on a rope, which is
also a real game. I just make a King of
the hill duck on a rock. Maybe it does sound
like you push somebody off.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, so cast your memory back there, folks. It's the
winter of eighteen ninety one. There's a gymnasium there at
Springfield College. Then it was called the International YMCA Training School,
and it's located in Springfield, Massachusetts. The college kids are
(07:22):
getting restless. The way they describe these kids in winter
makes me think of livestock that you have to put
in a barn exactly, And like the horses are wickering
and the cows are looking around and mooing or lowing restlessly.
I don't know. Yeah, I love a good lowing. Yeah,
and also really quickly.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
I don't think we mentioned this, but looking at images
of this dude, this guy looks like the kind of
you know, fellow you'd see in the halls of Congress,
or something like a portrait of like a scholarly gentleman
whizzen do you know, with circular eyeglasses and a quafft mustache,
you know, doesn't look like a guy that invented a game,
(08:03):
that became a purveyor of culture, you know, I mean,
it's kind of he doesn't look like that kind of cat.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
No, he looks like he has weirdly specific opinions on
the fall of the Ottoman Empire and like prices of
silver futures. Agreed. He he. I don't want to say nerd, right,
we're very pro nerd here, but I agree with you know,
he looks like he's in Congress.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Wizzened, wizened and wizardly. Wizardly indeed, but he You're right,
these these restless youths, they they need to be tamped down.
They're they're wild urges are just out of control, you know,
they're they've got cabin fever. And this guy, this size,
I think he's sort of challenged by a fellow, a colleague,
(08:48):
you know, to like, why don't you figure out a
way to occupy these these kids?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, And I the way that we're describing it with
restlessness and pent up energy, I want to picture the
invention of basketball as some kind of action thriller. So
instead of a colleague saying, hey, let's figure this out,
I want someone bursting in the door and saying, damn it, James,
this is a ticking time bos.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Something has to be done. Their hormones are raging. So
in the winter of eighteen ninety one to eighteen ninety
two in Springfield College, as you mentioned at the time
it was known as the International YMCA Training School, Nasmith
(09:35):
decided to take on this challenge and he spoke to
a kindly janitor member of the janitorial staff, and requested
that he go out and seek something that he could
use as goals. I think he asked for boxes, right initially,
some sort of perhaps shipping type container, you know, from
a fruit market or something like that. He couldn't find
(09:58):
any boxes, but he did find some baskets boxketball does
not have the same ring as basketball, or maybe it
would have been called box ball. Isn't it just funny though?
How maybe he would have found his way to the
baskets eventually. But one based on this, you know, kind
of serendipitous situation, one kind of tends to think that
(10:20):
this was a little bit arbitrary.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
You know, Yeah, it could have been any kind of container,
which I agree is pretty interesting. And also I want
to point out that the gymnasium class at the time
it was not like your pe classes today. One of
their activities was marching, which just seems so weirdly militaristic.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I mean, I mean, like you guys never played in
marching and like elementary school, like he played marching.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, it's just like you. March's like that I had
to do. I had to do marching because I was
in a pretty fascist, pro military Boy Scouts troop. But wow,
you mean the boy Scouts, I I lucked out. You
get you get one or two. You either get the
really hardcore let's train you for the revolution troops, right,
(11:09):
or you get the other ones. So I'm happy that
I ended up with the very weird revolutionaries.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I always think of that money Python bit from the
Meaning of Life where they're like running drills at some
sort of military training facility and he's like marching up
and down the squad. No good enough for you, you know, now,
don't stand that gulping like you've never seen the end
of gold before.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And yes, we know, marching band is a thing, folks.
Marching band is also a thing that reminds me, guys,
this this will be one of my last tangents for this.
I know there's a two part episode for us. Anyhow
do you know about the battle of bands here in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
I know about the concept of Battle of the bands,
but this is like a like a marching band battle.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah. So all the all the best college marching bands
get together at the stadium in town.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And they just serve each other, right, yeah, yeah, it's
like it's like, uh, dancing up at each other cheerleader film.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Well, there was the dristin dunk, isn't it, Gabrielle, get
it on, Light it up?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Do?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The thing you got served was the dancing one. Yeah,
so there's that, but it's also and then there was
drum line, which was, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Bring it up, bring it up. I was close, you
were very close. That's kind of a vague title anyhow,
But but yes, you guys, let's go to the Battle
of the bands. I swear it's such a fun time.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Oh can I jump in with a tangent? Yeah, if
you were in marching band, what instrument are you playing?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
What do you mean, like, hypothetically, Yeah, hypothetically? Which one
would you? Soon? Baby? Soon?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
No?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I have no amber.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Sure, I cannot play any except a drum. I could
play a drum, but those would be heavy, because drums
are like the coolest ones too.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I would either go drums or I want to. I
can't even remember the proper name for him, but the
dude who just has the cane, there's no drum major.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
The drum major, Yeah, I can't believe all say so,
I want to be the guy who's inside the tuba,
the person I want to be that guy.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I think that's actually called a susophone.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Susophone nice yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Invented by John Phillips, SUSA, another weirdo composer, inventor, polymath,
much like the guy who were supposed to be talking
about that, James Naysmith.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So he does the thing, gets these peach baskets as well.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
They are right, you know, woven, kind of wickery peach baskets.
This is the late eighteen hundred, so they probably had
a different vibe than maybe what we're used to. But
he then attached them to like the kind of opposing
balconies in this open you know gym where there's I
guess you know, think of like a high school gym
with there's maybe a walking track around the top, something
(13:44):
approaching that, and then he's like, huh, well, I can't
have a game without some rules. So he started to
kind of brainstorm as to what he rules he would
impose on those games. At this point, all he had
were these baskets, very organic. He really just kind of
was going by the seat of his pants. He got
to give him props for that. He realizes though, that
(14:07):
an important facet of what he's trying to accomplish is
to have a game that is simple enough to understand, uh,
complex enough to be interesting, and doesn't involve punches and
kicks and karate chops, you know, like rugby and other
more rough and tumble type sports.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And they can't be like a one on one or
two or two thing like tennis. You have to accommodate
the entire class. So the kids need to be running
around and they exercises another important fast right, the callous
That is part of what he's teaching. And so he
divides these kids into teams of nine and he tells
(14:46):
each team, look, you got two teams. He got one ball.
I'm gonna blow this whistle and then you will. One
starting team gets the ball. You try to put it
in the other team's basket. You know, if you're one
of the kids who is I feel like he took
the kids, the two least fit kids, and said, you
guys stand at the balcony, and when the ball goes
(15:09):
in the basket, your job is to take it out
of the basket. So you're still participating, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
So, and also, this is not the basketball that we
think of today, where there's you know, the ball comes through.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
You go No, it just goes, it goes in. They
didn't figure out cutting off the bottom.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
They didn't figure that out yet. They hadn't gotten there yet. Ye.
But his epiphany comes when he realizes that there's a
very important rule that will sort of take care of
the non violent aspect of it, which is that you
can't move with the ball. That's right, you can't run
with the ball. I mean, I believe they call that
traveling or like holding or something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
It's yeah, you get a ballance.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
But this original basketball barely resembles what we know today
as basketball. We're going to get to that. Yeah, it
is still I believe you can't hold the ball and move.
You have to burst the ball the ball, but still
kind of a lot of contact in modern basketball, but
it does still seem safer than football.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yes, yeah, you're less likely to have suffer the long
term consequences of a concussion.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, dramatic brain injury.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And if you're watching basketball, you're less likely to lose
hours of your life sitting through commercials. Which is why
football is football. American football at least is still mainly
just popular in the US.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
It's because it gives so much opportunity for advertising.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, I mean a lot of people just watch the
Super Bowl for the halftime show.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
If you guys hear about the new rule in college football,
what's that outside?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Like the two minute warning? Are they putting in guns?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
No?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
If the first down, they just run the clock to
make the actual game shorter, so they put more commercials in.
That's ridiculous because everyone's complaining about how long college football
games have gotten. So instead of taking more commercials ou
because the NFL took more commercials out a couple of
years ago, college is just making the game shorter.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
This is why I'm glad.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I don't like sports, but I do think basketball is energy,
is entertaining and enjoyable to watch.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, agreed, And there are there are some examples of
modern myth making here. I didn't know this going in,
but there are two very different accounts of the first
basketball game. And one of them it goes off fine,
you know, and they're all learning together kumbay a hands
across America kind of stuff. In the other one, people
(17:21):
almost murder each other. So you want to do the
murder one.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
First, obviously. Yeah, it basically devolves into a brawl because again,
the rules are kind of fluid at this point, right,
and they don't quite get it, and people are just
used to going around slapping balls out of people's hands,
you know, being a little more aggressive. After all, these
(17:46):
are these are described as a group of incorrigible youths.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
By nay Smith himself. Yeah, in nineteen thirty nine, he's
talking about this on a radio show called We the People.
Radio is sort of the first podcast and it's the
only known recording of James Naysmith's voice. He's seventy seven
at the time, and he tells the studio audience basically
(18:11):
he makes it sound like these were the lost boys
from Peter Pash Or like Lord of the Flies type stuff.
He says, you know, like you pointed out, He says,
I had to tame this class of incorrigibles, and the
show's host, the interviewer Gabriel Heater. She says, what rules
did you have for your new game, doctor Naysmith, and
(18:32):
his response is epic.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Oh yeah, he did as we said. He they were
a little fluid. He didn't have enough, he said, And
that's where I made my big mistake. The boys began tackling, kicking,
and punching, karate chopping. I added that part. They ended
up in a free for all in the middle of
the gym floor. Before I could pull them apart. One
boy was knocked out. Several of them had black eyes,
(18:54):
and one had a dislocated shoulder. Dude, that's wild. It
takes a lot to dislocate somebody's shoulder. That's not like
a minor injury. That's serious.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
They've been pent up all winter. I guess how did
he let this get so out of hands? He concludes,
it certainly was murder. After that first match, I thought
they'd kill each other, but they kept nagging me to
let them play again. And I tell you what. In
that version of the story, the reason they're nagging him
is because they wanted to settle some scores. Sure, that's
(19:24):
what happened. It was it was evolving into a uh
into a group brawl. And so he says, okay, look
like you point out. He says, I added some more rules.
Basketball became a fine clean sport, good clean fun, good clean.
Hoh some fun. And then he says, I guess it
just goes to show what you can do if you
(19:45):
have to. And the audience burst into applause. Max come
to the braw Brah yeah and then ah yeah, perfect,
and orchestra plays him out the golden days of radio.
I love that stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
But like they used to literally have radio orc stress.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
You know, that was a whole thing. I still have.
I still have an old collection of some of those.
This is maybe a very Southern thing, but we got
this place called Cracker Barrel here in the South, and
Cracker Barrel is famous. It's technically a restaurant, but it's
less famous for its food and more famous for its
very weird general store. Country store. The country store, yeah,
(20:24):
where they sell collections of old timey radio tracks.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
They do sell those kinds of things, and they also
sell chochkeys and and drinking wooden puzzle, little wooden puzzles
and like the thing with the with the golf tees.
But my favorite I was I was at the cracker
barrel recently on the way back from a trip to
the beach, and they were selling all kinds of like
Halloween themed things that could very easily be misconstrued as satanic,
(20:50):
a little bit satany.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Wow, they sell alcohol now I heard about that. Wow,
since they did that.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
But you know, things change sure as this boy, these
these segues as did the story around the first game
of basketball, and we often know that. You know, sometimes
when you approve a writer to do your memoir, you
know they might you might give them access in exchange
for them writing a favorable account, you know, of your life.
(21:19):
Like what's happened with this Elon Musk book that just
came out. Apparently the writer has already retracted the way
he characterized Elon shutting down these Starlink satellites. You know
that we're supposed to aid the Ukraine in that conflict.
He basically came out and said that the way he
wrote it in the book was a mistake. And he's
always kind of had a history of being a little
(21:40):
cow twy to mister Musk as opposed to like this
this being a tellof so one could imagine there's a
similar situation with mister Nasmith because the account in the book.
It's weird though, because he told the rough and tumble
account himself, so it's not like he would be opposed
to that being out in the world. Yeah, but maybe
he wanted the official that's in his book to be
(22:01):
I don't know. The guy doesn't strike me as a liar,
A little bit of a kook, but not a liar.
But according to the memoir, it was a It was
just a smashing success and nothing could have gone more swimmingly.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Right, So what is most likely I would I would
guess what is most likely here is that there was
some diplomacy in the telling of the story in the memoir.
And then as the guy ages he's got his legacy,
he's not worried about getting in trouble. You know, now
he's a sports legend. Yeah, so now he's a good
he's just telling the fun version of the story. We
(22:36):
know that the bones of it are true. He did
invent what becomes basketball. He did have to he did
have to maintain control over a bunch of rowdy kids,
and he was coming in hot because the pe teacher
before him just couldn't get the kids interested in anything.
So this embellishment about it being violent if it's untrue.
(23:02):
According to how to Watch Basketball Like a Genius by
Nick Green, the embellishment probably came about because the first
game might have been very boring.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, finish with a score of one to nothing, So
what is this soccer? That's snoozer material right there?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Not good.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
A student by the name of William Chase got the
only basket in what maybe would be considered a three
pointer today, you know, a real half court you know,
fling right, heavo, So he obviously was the was the
star player. The floor of the gym where all this
went down measured thirty five by fifty four, so this, yeah,
(23:44):
this would have been basically, based on current kind of standards,
a mid court shot.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, this is like, yeah, he's he's half half a
court away. That's epic. That's like Steph Curry level. And
the game was clumsy, maybe more than a little chaotic,
And then Naismith later wrote, this is this is such
a weird cold burn. He says, there's no teamwork, but
each man did his best.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Great, what does that mean? Anssipation Award.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Is there a guy like popping and locking the corner?
Who knows?
Speaker 3 (24:18):
I do think, you know, we'll get to some of
Naismith's more out there ideas about the human species, but
you start to get hints at it with his theory
that young men needed competition inherently and they had to
fulfill some kind of play instinct, which just really feels
like looking at man as as an animal in a
(24:40):
lot of ways, you know, like like a primitive beast,
which is not I'm not saying that's not there's not
some truth to that at times, but it does seem
like this guy he had some he had some ideas.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, to jump in here real quick. You'll actually hear that.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
A lot of people who argue like pro like NFL
pro football will say that it's like it's a up
substitute for war. It very much is, and you know
football is very much trench Warfairly, it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, and so that is an argument for it. So
you say that I wanted to jump in and just
toss that in. Let's do this sound cute.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Phone and he drops in the knowledge just for you.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
So good, there we go. You know, I agree with you.
When Noel and r pal Matt Frederick whom you just heard, folks,
we did an episode of this is many many moons
ago on sports as a substitute for war, and the
psychology is there, which is why you know, Max thought
I was joking when I was like, I don't know,
(25:44):
update the rules. Give them some not lethal firearms, but
like give them, you know, give them some like something heavy.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Or we could just you know, post some like sniper turrets.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Have you seen that thing?
Speaker 3 (25:55):
There's a meme or a video meme where it's like
shots from American Sniper where Bradley Cooper's you know, the American,
the titular American sniper and he's popping off shots. And
then it's showing that those moments where male soccer players
just fall down and clutch themselves when they're literally brushed
by another player. Apparently it's like a thing. And then
(26:16):
compare it to women's soccer where they just play on
with like blood gushing out of their eye sockets and stuff.
I mean, it's pretty comical.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
American Gladiator James N. Smith would have loved American Gladiator.
You guys, remember that show.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Dude, I went and saw them and Augusta when I
saw him live, they did. There's there's a there's a
documentary about the American Gladiators on.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Netflix right now.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
And surprise, surprise, they were all a bunch of juicers.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
What like like uh.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Not the Orange Variety never guessed. Apparently lots of orgies
happening in the locker rooms too between Can you imagine
that like a juiced up orgy like that?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I'm just imagining the smell, And I wish I wasn't.
As he said, nay Smith, little wonky. We opened with that.
You gotta be kind of eccentric to say I'm an
inventor sport. And originally the students who, by the way,
again are on board with this from game one, you know,
(27:16):
they got black eyes, dislocated shoulders, scores to settle. They say, ah,
mister Inn, you should call this Naysmith ball bro And
he said, well, we've got to basket, We've got the ball.
Let's just call it that.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
If it had been a box, it would have been
box ball.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Or if it had been a basket in a box,
it would have been basketbox. He's being very reasonable. I
think so too. I'm glad he's a ball though, and
so we wanted to share some of the rules that
he codified. You know, he's so he's basically he's the
Moses of basketball, right. So here's what he puts on
his tablets. He says, like you played out earlier, I
(27:57):
don't want the players to move when they're holding the ball.
That's kind of why rugby gets violent. And he really
he has this moment where he says, look, if you
can't roam with the ball, we don't have to have
people be tackled. Right, And if you if you listen
to his and we can laundry list them to or
some of them. But if you listen to his original rules,
(28:19):
what's surprising is they don't seem like they all apply
to basketball today. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
I mean again, I'm not what you'd call a sports fan,
so I don't really I know the basics of the
rules of basketball, but a lot of these didn't seem familiar.
I think we should list themun because they're pretty pretty fascinating.
The ball may be thrown in any direction with one
or both hands.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Okay, makes sense. Yet the ball may be batted in
any direction with one or both hands, never with the fist.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
God help you if you use a fist. This isn't volleyball,
this basketball.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I mean, that's a great way to knox one's tooth
out is to hit a basketball with a fist.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
But also a slap will get it going pretty fast too.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Sure it also something that rule of particular feels like
it was written for one kid with like a bad
whole life. It was just like, I just want to punch.
Just picture that Arthur Meme.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
You know, fist, you know, fist, Yeah, you know there's
there's there's rage in that fist. A player cannot run
with the ball. The player must throw it from the
spot on which he catches it. I love these very
gendered rules as well. By the way, allowance to be
made for a man who catches the ball when running
at a good speed. Wait, allowance to be made for
(29:34):
a man who catches the ball when running at a
good if.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
You're running, they throw the ball while you're running and
you catch it. He's saying, you.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Don't have to like like put on the brakes and
still like a cartoon character.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
So how it adventually progresses.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
You can take a step without dribbling, which there's also
like the euro maneuver and stuff like that, which is
ways to manipulate that without breaking the rule.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And you have to hold the ball in your hands
or between your hands. The next rule. You can't tuck
it in your pits, between your thighs, between your head
and neck. You can't just bend it behind one knee.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Unless you're in the Harlem Globetrotters' but that's more like a.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Show later on. Yeah, so tremendous basketball player. Sure, of course,
the arms or body must not be used for holding
the ball. That's right.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
No shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or striking or karate chops
in any way. The person of an opponent shall be allowed.
That's like a Yoda sentence, Right, no shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping,
or striking anyway. The person of an opponent shall be allowed.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
And he didn't just say the opponent, the person of
an opponent, which sounds very legalistic, but I love the
idea of you know, it was probably fictional. I love
the idea again, of the these rules being written for
one really violent kid, like as soon as the whistle blew,
he just did a roundhouse. Yea, someone totally cold cock them. Yeah, Uh,
(31:04):
this continues.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
This is actually this is we get into something that
I think, I mean, some form of this obviously still
exists today. The first infringement of this rule by any
players shall count as a foul. The second shall disqualify
him until the next goal is made, or if there
was evident intent to injure the person for the whole
of the game. No substitute allowed. Max Is this in
(31:26):
any way resembling the foul system of modern basketball?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Kind of?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
It is a So this's a sub sect of fouls
called flagrant fouls. Is a flagrant one, a flagrant two.
So a flagrant one is like when you like injure
someone by a kind of negligence, like like you know,
you're not like attempting to injure them, but you shouldn't
have done what you did. And what that what that
is is the team. I think traditionally there's there's different situations.
(31:53):
You get two free throws and the ball, so it's
much higher than a regular poule, which is just two
free throws or the ball.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
And then if someone gets two flagrant ones in a game,
they get ejected from the game, and there's a flagrant
two which is like, no, no, no, man, you weren't even
trying to like, you know, go for the ball. You
were just trying to tackle this guy in the air.
Then you're first and second degree murderer. That that's what
I was thinking. It's like manslaughter and murder. Yeah, manslaughters one,
murders two and two. You're immediately ejected from the game.
(32:21):
But you know, when these rules are written, I don't
think they had bench players because you know basketball, you
always changing.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
It does say no substitutions in a lot of these rules.
I'm going to use the word flag or the phrase
flagrant foul way more off total noun, like you've committed
a flagrant foul. And yeah, so we've got that rule
does matter. And then they go on to define some
of the ideas of what a foul is. So rule
six is a foul is striking at the ball with
the fist violation of rules three, four and as such
(32:50):
as described in rule five. So he just says this
is what a foul is. I think he starts counting fouls.
If either side makes three consecutive fouls, then the other
team gets a point. It shall count as a goal
for the opponents. What does consecutive mean? It's good, but
it's not perfect because the clock on consecutive fouls starts
over whenever the other team does something nest. Yeah, and
(33:12):
there's no mention of penalties of like involving free throws
or like extra opportunities to get points. There's a way
that these consecutive fouls translate into free points, you know,
for the opposing team. But it doesn't like there's no
you know, mini game, which I would say.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
That'd be great. It's kind of well, that's kind of
what a free throw is.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
It's like, oh, we we've triggered this event, and now
you don't necessarily get it. Would you get the opportunity
to get it?
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah? And then what is a goal? He says. A
goal is made when the ball is thrown or batted
from the grounds into the basket and it stays in
the basket. Remember the basket saw as a bottom providing
those defending the goal do not touch or disturb the goal.
If the ball rests on the edge and the opponent
moves the basket, it counts as a goal. That's way different.
(33:57):
That's very different.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Ah, yes, no, but goltending is still a call at
least in an American basketball it's not international in FEBA.
But like so, if the ball is above the basket
and a team touches it, it's either offensive interference, which
is to turnover no basket, or it's goltending automatic basket.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
But Foeba's way cooler because Foeba you can just rip
it off top of the rim tight. So there's also
there's also the idea of a ball going out of bounds.
We all remember this, You've seen it in every basketball game.
When the ball goes out of bounds, it shall be
thrown into the field of play by the person first
touching it. In case of a dispute, the umpire the
(34:36):
ref shall throw it straight into the field. The thrower,
in which is a cool title, gets five seconds to
do it. If he holds it longer, it automatically goes
to the other team. If any side persists in trying
to delay the game, then they get a foul.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
The umpire shall be judged of the men and shall
note the fouls and notify the referee. When three consecutive
fowls have been made, he shall have power to disqualify
men according to rule five. I'm sorry an umpire in basketball.
Yeah they changed it, yeah lasphemy. Yeah yeah, so uh okay,
but we do we have a referee, right exactly. So
(35:14):
the next rule, the referee shall be judge of the
ball and shall decide when the ball is in play
in bounds to which side it belongs, and she'll keep
the time. He shall decide when a goal has been
made and keep account of the goals, with any other
duties that are usually performed by a referee. So the
way it's written, it sounds like there's a bath and
an umpire, but now they're the same guy. That makes sense.
(35:35):
Seems like it's convoluted to have both.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Well, no way, it could be one of those things.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
So like in football, there's like a ref there's an umpire,
there's like all the different people have a different type.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Of jurisdiction brand Yeah, I get it. But then basketball
you just have referees and baseballly you just have umpires.
There's no jurisdiction for them. Yeah, I don't know. It
seems like basketball is.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
A little more of a of a ni kind of
sport too, like where one person could probably keep track,
it's not like an insane number of players.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
And it's similar in some ways to like how soccer works.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Were, like the refs move up and down the field,
and so when you're on this part of the field,
they're assigned to like this section and stuff like that.
So like everyone's kind of calling similar things in a
basketball game, which.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Goes to show too that a ref in basketball, or
maybe in any sport, particularly in basketball, not not so
much in baseball, has to be pretty fit because they
got to keep right moving, bobbing and weaving and running along.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
And that's where it's different than like football is because
you have like this guy's job is to make sure
everyone's on side, along with a couple of other calls.
But like they're very much more specialized jobs for football referees.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And there's there's more to look at too, right. Also,
the weird system of how they outline a first down
on the stadium or on the on the field is
pretty fascinating. Still, all that eludes me a down. It's
Greek to me.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
It's fine. I'm fine with it keeping it that way.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
You're there for the commercials, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
I'm there to hear other people's hot takes on the commercials.
I don't even need to see the commercials themselves.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
I love going to live sports games for the energy,
and I love concessions food. I know it's super trash,
but I I I know those nachos are not worth
twelve dollars or whatever. That color does not exist in nation,
but it hits different. That's hit different especially.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
You know what I really like is French fries at
a baseball game, smothered.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
In catch up directly on the fries. Amazing.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
That at leaks for me as the nostalgic things I
used to play Little league and then go to little
league games. That's just a classic sport. You know, snack
like peanuts at faseball. That's how I feel too.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah. The next rule is the time shall be two
to fifteen minute halves with five minutes rest between. And
the final rule this is again from our pal Nick Greens.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
You don't talk about fight club as you.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Don't talk about fight Club, That's right, James Nasmith, inventor
of fight Club. Chuck Palainook has been lying to you.
Uh No. The last rule is the side making the
most goals and in that time in that time window
will be declared the winner. If there is a draw
and the captains of the teams agree, then they can
just keep playing in kind of a death mode record.
(38:10):
Scratch that foul ball.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
We're we're we're ding dong, ding dong.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
We're successfully making this one of the seven times out timeouts?
We get is it times out or is it timeouts?
Time outs? Unclear timeouts? It's not like attorneys General. Okay,
we're taking we're taking the bass. There's so much more
to explore about the world of basketball thanks to our
research associate.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Doctor Z's that's right, not to be confused with doctor J. J. Jay,
who is an important figure in the early days of basketball.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
That's doctor J's name. I almost got it. Hold on,
hold on, then I see googling. I have googling. I
can tell you hold on almost. Oh gosh. What is
the male name that is most likely to begin with
a J that is not Justin.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
Or Jason Johnson close Jensen.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Also, I have a part two's question. Oh boy, oh,
now I'm trying too hard and it's gone. What is it?
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Julius Julius Irving, Julius Irving.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
What league did he play in? And b L No,
you played at the American Basketball Association.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
There was two leagues. There's the NBA and the ABA,
and they they've went together. Hey, man, if I put
together a trivia team, do you want to be the
sports ringer. I'm looking for a new sports ringer.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Sure, it's it's about forty five thousand dollars a year
to retain me.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
That sounds pretty reasonable. Actually, I mean, I'd like you
take it in bar tabs. I'd like it for you
to pay me.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Feat.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I take it in a French fries covered in ketchup boom.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
All right, a delicacy. This will all make sense later.
Thanks also or not or not. Thanks also to our
super producer, mister Max Williams. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka
the Quiz who else? Who else? Oh?
Speaker 3 (39:56):
You know all the hits, Alex Williams who composed He's
Jeff Coates. Chris rossiotis here in spirit, the works You
Me and the Devil Makes Three.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Basketball is fun. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's have a shout out for our
super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hip to the hot that you're a little ball. I
don't know what that was, but I'm talking about basketball.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Nailed it, nailed it. I'm Ben your Noel. Noel, what
do you think of when you think of basketball?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Oh? I think of incorrigibles that I think of them,
what cannot be tamed, you know, the spirit of sporting,
chance and excitement and dribbling and hip. To top of
the thing that Max said.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I think of all my stubbed fingers because I play.
I believe you wouldn't believe it because I'm not the
world's tallest guy. But I was actually pretty good at
basketball my younger days because I had I had a
lot of fight in me.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I think it's a misnomer that you have to be tall.
It definitely makes you, gives you an edge, but I
mean you can. Aren't there some like famous short shorties.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Like short like Steph Curry Trey Young who are both
taller than all three of us.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
And we'll talk about why. Right, we'll talk about why
that happened along the way. This week, we're excited to
explore the history of basketball. And guess what, folks, even
if you're not a you know, a sports ball person,
if you don't care too much about basketball, you're still
gonna enjoy this. Noel and I were talking, there's some
(01:49):
there's some ridiculousness.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
To say, your granddad's history of basketball, right right, And
if unless your granddad was was a guy by the
name of James Naysmith, Yeah, and so was born in
the eighteen hundreds and born probably would be more like
a great grand point great.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So I want to thank James Nasmith for enabling a
young Ben bowl in to you know, despite being short,
I was like Spider Man doing parkour drunk. I was
all over the place. You know, it's weird that I
still have ten fingers. But thank you, James. Let's learn
a little bit more about you, mister Nasmith. This is
(02:22):
something we said right before we started recording. You kind
of have to be a little bit eccentric to wake
up one day and say I'm gonna make us sports.
That's right.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
And by the way, no relation to Mike Naysmith from
The Monkeys, who was also a little bit eccentric, true
and maybe didn't invent a sport, but did single handedly
invent rock and roll.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Hey, hey, they're the Monkeys, that's true.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
They monkey around sometimes. I actually need to watch that show.
So there's a podcast that I really like call with
Gorley and Rush. They talk about gently talk about horror movies,
and they were saying how some of The Monkeys' sketches
in their TV show are like Tim and Eric level
weird and absurd. Yes, and I I need that in
my life. And actually, I think the Monkeys get unfairly
maligned as sort of this like fake band, but they
(03:06):
actually had some really good tunes as well.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I feel like it's so easy to criticize something when
you're not making something as well, you know what I mean,
Like I'm a Believer is a bop.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
But even some of their deeper cuts, and there's some
of their albums that are like a little more experimental anyway,
again different Nasmith spelled differently even not sure why I
brought it up. Now I know why, because we're fans
of Tangents here on Ridiculous systems.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Oh, Last Train to Clarksville. I you know, I love people.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
The Kinks.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
They they did Last Train in Clarksville. The Monkeys did well.
The Kinks do. The Kinks do it. Maybe it's a cover.
I didn't think I didn't think it was. Yeah, Last
Train in Clarksville is by the Monkeys.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Really, Kinks do a great Last Train to Clarksville. Nice,
very cool.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
It's I mean, everybody loves It's a bop. I had,
really I had a parody version of it. I would
play called Last Train to Hateville and it was about
being late to the airport anyway. That's where the airport
is here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'll bring us back
from the Tangent. Sorry, I'm idiot.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
The Kinks did not do Last trin the clark so
they get a song called Last of the Steam Powered Trains.
We need to make a train train related guys.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
This is going to be a weird couple of weeks
for us because we're we've got announcements, we've got some housekeeping.
Noll your head into Detroit, max your head now in October.
I'm heading somewhere in October. And then before that we're
we're hitting Vegas, hitting the strip.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
We're hitting the strip. We're gonna fear and loathe our
way through that city of lights.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
At our boss beat me here, Max, our boss can
keeps roasting me for being excited about seeing the Hoover
dam Anyway, whatever, it's a marvel of engineering, it really is.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I mean, I mean, I wish I could come to
be that company with you, because I'm assuming you're going
by yourself, right, Ben, I.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Rented a car. I think it'll be a thig where
we'll see who wants to come. I want to come. Yeah, yeah, okay, awesome, Yes,
then please come. Damn me up, fam. That's okay. That
explains that text message. Okay, it was about the whover
NIS was okay. So this is an epic tangent for us,
but we've got a lot of stuff going on worth it, man,
you think I think you know.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You come for the history, you stay for the Tangents,
or you leave in a fit of rage for the Tangents.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Take the last train to Tangents exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
So.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
James Naysmith, he's a guy. Yeah that that.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
James Naysmith was a real kooky character. He was a
second year grad student who was essentially put in charge
of a physical education program.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Before this was like a thing.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I don't even think they called it kinesiology at the time.
That was like sort of when I learned about that,
I guess health class whatever. They always called it. The
study of kinesiology, I think is named after like the
the Father of of health, which isn't which isn't God. Surprisingly,
it's it's some some dude named Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yes, he's basically pee teacher, that's right, right, is a
younger pee teacher and another teacher, one of his colleagues,
was saying, you know, we've got an issue here, Jimmy,
which is, you know, you can have the kids out
running in circles or you know, frolicking when it's warm
outside during the summer in the autumn of the spring,
(06:24):
but we need a game to keep them active in
the winter months. Now, James, being a Canadian, he's about
thirty years old now, he's familiar with sports that are
popular in Canada. He's familiar with cold weather, and so
he says, all right, I'm gonna take a little bit
from rugby, a little bit of lacrosse, and then a
(06:45):
little bit from a game that I've never heard of
duck on a rock? Duck on a rock? Have you
heard of this? No?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
I assume it's like dope on a rope, which is
also a real game. I just make a King of
the hill duck on a rock. Maybe it does sound
like you push somebody off.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, so cast your memory back there, folks. It's the
winter of eighteen ninety one. There's a gymnasium there at
Springfield College. Then it was called the International YMCA Training School,
and it's located in Springfield, Massachusetts. The college kids are
(07:22):
getting restless. The way they describe these kids in winter
makes me think of livestock that you have to put
in a barn exactly, And like the horses are wickering
and the cows are looking around and mooing or lowing restlessly.
I don't know. Yeah, I love a good lowing. Yeah,
and also really quickly.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
I don't think we mentioned this, but looking at images
of this dude, this guy looks like the kind of
you know, fellow you'd see in the halls of Congress,
or something like a portrait of like a scholarly gentleman
whizzen do you know, with circular eyeglasses and a quafft mustache,
you know, doesn't look like a guy that invented a game,
(08:03):
that became a purveyor of culture, you know, I mean,
it's kind of he doesn't look like that kind of cat.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
No, he looks like he has weirdly specific opinions on
the fall of the Ottoman Empire and like prices of
silver futures. Agreed. He he. I don't want to say nerd, right,
we're very pro nerd here, but I agree with you know,
he looks like he's in Congress.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Wizzened, wizened and wizardly. Wizardly indeed, but he You're right,
these these restless youths, they they need to be tamped down.
They're they're wild urges are just out of control, you know,
they're they've got cabin fever. And this guy, this size,
I think he's sort of challenged by a fellow, a colleague,
(08:48):
you know, to like, why don't you figure out a
way to occupy these these kids?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, And I the way that we're describing it with
restlessness and pent up energy, I want to picture the
invention of basketball as some kind of action thriller. So
instead of a colleague saying, hey, let's figure this out,
I want someone bursting in the door and saying, damn it, James,
this is a ticking time bos.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Something has to be done. Their hormones are raging. So
in the winter of eighteen ninety one to eighteen ninety
two in Springfield College, as you mentioned at the time
it was known as the International YMCA Training School, Nasmith
(09:35):
decided to take on this challenge and he spoke to
a kindly janitor member of the janitorial staff, and requested
that he go out and seek something that he could
use as goals. I think he asked for boxes, right initially,
some sort of perhaps shipping type container, you know, from
a fruit market or something like that. He couldn't find
(09:58):
any boxes, but he did find some baskets boxketball does
not have the same ring as basketball, or maybe it
would have been called box ball. Isn't it just funny though?
How maybe he would have found his way to the
baskets eventually. But one based on this, you know, kind
of serendipitous situation, one kind of tends to think that
(10:20):
this was a little bit arbitrary.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
You know, Yeah, it could have been any kind of container,
which I agree is pretty interesting. And also I want
to point out that the gymnasium class at the time
it was not like your pe classes today. One of
their activities was marching, which just seems so weirdly militaristic.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I mean, I mean, like you guys never played in
marching and like elementary school, like he played marching.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, it's just like you. March's like that I had
to do. I had to do marching because I was
in a pretty fascist, pro military Boy Scouts troop. But wow,
you mean the boy Scouts, I I lucked out. You
get you get one or two. You either get the
really hardcore let's train you for the revolution troops, right,
(11:09):
or you get the other ones. So I'm happy that
I ended up with the very weird revolutionaries.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I always think of that money Python bit from the
Meaning of Life where they're like running drills at some
sort of military training facility and he's like marching up
and down the squad. No good enough for you, you know, now,
don't stand that gulping like you've never seen the end
of gold before.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And yes, we know, marching band is a thing, folks.
Marching band is also a thing that reminds me, guys,
this this will be one of my last tangents for this.
I know there's a two part episode for us. Anyhow
do you know about the battle of bands here in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
I know about the concept of Battle of the bands,
but this is like a like a marching band battle.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah. So all the all the best college marching bands
get together at the stadium in town.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And they just serve each other, right, yeah, yeah, it's
like it's like, uh, dancing up at each other cheerleader film.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Well, there was the dristin dunk, isn't it, Gabrielle, get
it on, Light it up?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Do?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The thing you got served was the dancing one. Yeah,
so there's that, but it's also and then there was
drum line, which was, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Bring it up, bring it up. I was close, you
were very close. That's kind of a vague title anyhow,
But but yes, you guys, let's go to the Battle
of the bands. I swear it's such a fun time.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Oh can I jump in with a tangent? Yeah, if
you were in marching band, what instrument are you playing?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
What do you mean, like, hypothetically, Yeah, hypothetically? Which one
would you? Soon? Baby? Soon?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
No?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I have no amber.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Sure, I cannot play any except a drum. I could
play a drum, but those would be heavy, because drums
are like the coolest ones too.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I would either go drums or I want to. I
can't even remember the proper name for him, but the
dude who just has the cane, there's no drum major.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
The drum major, Yeah, I can't believe all say so,
I want to be the guy who's inside the tuba,
the person I want to be that guy.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I think that's actually called a susophone.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Susophone nice yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Invented by John Phillips, SUSA, another weirdo composer, inventor, polymath,
much like the guy who were supposed to be talking
about that, James Naysmith.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So he does the thing, gets these peach baskets as well.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
They are right, you know, woven, kind of wickery peach baskets.
This is the late eighteen hundred, so they probably had
a different vibe than maybe what we're used to. But
he then attached them to like the kind of opposing
balconies in this open you know gym where there's I
guess you know, think of like a high school gym
with there's maybe a walking track around the top, something
(13:44):
approaching that, and then he's like, huh, well, I can't
have a game without some rules. So he started to
kind of brainstorm as to what he rules he would
impose on those games. At this point, all he had
were these baskets, very organic. He really just kind of
was going by the seat of his pants. He got
to give him props for that. He realizes though, that
(14:07):
an important facet of what he's trying to accomplish is
to have a game that is simple enough to understand, uh,
complex enough to be interesting, and doesn't involve punches and
kicks and karate chops, you know, like rugby and other
more rough and tumble type sports.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And they can't be like a one on one or
two or two thing like tennis. You have to accommodate
the entire class. So the kids need to be running
around and they exercises another important fast right, the callous
That is part of what he's teaching. And so he
divides these kids into teams of nine and he tells
(14:46):
each team, look, you got two teams. He got one ball.
I'm gonna blow this whistle and then you will. One
starting team gets the ball. You try to put it
in the other team's basket. You know, if you're one
of the kids who is I feel like he took
the kids, the two least fit kids, and said, you
guys stand at the balcony, and when the ball goes
(15:09):
in the basket, your job is to take it out
of the basket. So you're still participating, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
So, and also, this is not the basketball that we
think of today, where there's you know, the ball comes through.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
You go No, it just goes, it goes in. They
didn't figure out cutting off the bottom.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
They didn't figure that out yet. They hadn't gotten there yet. Ye.
But his epiphany comes when he realizes that there's a
very important rule that will sort of take care of
the non violent aspect of it, which is that you
can't move with the ball. That's right, you can't run
with the ball. I mean, I believe they call that
traveling or like holding or something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
It's yeah, you get a ballance.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
But this original basketball barely resembles what we know today
as basketball. We're going to get to that. Yeah, it
is still I believe you can't hold the ball and move.
You have to burst the ball the ball, but still
kind of a lot of contact in modern basketball, but
it does still seem safer than football.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yes, yeah, you're less likely to have suffer the long
term consequences of a concussion.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, dramatic brain injury.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And if you're watching basketball, you're less likely to lose
hours of your life sitting through commercials. Which is why
football is football. American football at least is still mainly
just popular in the US.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
It's because it gives so much opportunity for advertising.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, I mean a lot of people just watch the
Super Bowl for the halftime show.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
If you guys hear about the new rule in college football,
what's that outside?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Like the two minute warning? Are they putting in guns?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
No?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
If the first down, they just run the clock to
make the actual game shorter, so they put more commercials in.
That's ridiculous because everyone's complaining about how long college football
games have gotten. So instead of taking more commercials ou
because the NFL took more commercials out a couple of
years ago, college is just making the game shorter.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
This is why I'm glad.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I don't like sports, but I do think basketball is energy,
is entertaining and enjoyable to watch.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, agreed, And there are there are some examples of
modern myth making here. I didn't know this going in,
but there are two very different accounts of the first
basketball game. And one of them it goes off fine,
you know, and they're all learning together kumbay a hands
across America kind of stuff. In the other one, people
(17:21):
almost murder each other. So you want to do the
murder one.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
First, obviously. Yeah, it basically devolves into a brawl because again,
the rules are kind of fluid at this point, right,
and they don't quite get it, and people are just
used to going around slapping balls out of people's hands,
you know, being a little more aggressive. After all, these
(17:46):
are these are described as a group of incorrigible youths.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
By nay Smith himself. Yeah, in nineteen thirty nine, he's
talking about this on a radio show called We the People.
Radio is sort of the first podcast and it's the
only known recording of James Naysmith's voice. He's seventy seven
at the time, and he tells the studio audience basically
(18:11):
he makes it sound like these were the lost boys
from Peter Pash Or like Lord of the Flies type stuff.
He says, you know, like you pointed out, He says,
I had to tame this class of incorrigibles, and the
show's host, the interviewer Gabriel Heater. She says, what rules
did you have for your new game, doctor Naysmith, and
(18:32):
his response is epic.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Oh yeah, he did as we said. He they were
a little fluid. He didn't have enough, he said, And
that's where I made my big mistake. The boys began tackling, kicking,
and punching, karate chopping. I added that part. They ended
up in a free for all in the middle of
the gym floor. Before I could pull them apart. One
boy was knocked out. Several of them had black eyes,
(18:54):
and one had a dislocated shoulder. Dude, that's wild. It
takes a lot to dislocate somebody's shoulder. That's not like
a minor injury. That's serious.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
They've been pent up all winter. I guess how did
he let this get so out of hands? He concludes,
it certainly was murder. After that first match, I thought
they'd kill each other, but they kept nagging me to
let them play again. And I tell you what. In
that version of the story, the reason they're nagging him
is because they wanted to settle some scores. Sure, that's
(19:24):
what happened. It was it was evolving into a uh
into a group brawl. And so he says, okay, look
like you point out. He says, I added some more rules.
Basketball became a fine clean sport, good clean fun, good clean.
Hoh some fun. And then he says, I guess it
just goes to show what you can do if you
(19:45):
have to. And the audience burst into applause. Max come
to the braw Brah yeah and then ah yeah, perfect,
and orchestra plays him out the golden days of radio.
I love that stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
But like they used to literally have radio orc stress.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
You know, that was a whole thing. I still have.
I still have an old collection of some of those.
This is maybe a very Southern thing, but we got
this place called Cracker Barrel here in the South, and
Cracker Barrel is famous. It's technically a restaurant, but it's
less famous for its food and more famous for its
very weird general store. Country store. The country store, yeah,
(20:24):
where they sell collections of old timey radio tracks.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
They do sell those kinds of things, and they also
sell chochkeys and and drinking wooden puzzle, little wooden puzzles
and like the thing with the with the golf tees.
But my favorite I was I was at the cracker
barrel recently on the way back from a trip to
the beach, and they were selling all kinds of like
Halloween themed things that could very easily be misconstrued as satanic,
(20:50):
a little bit satany.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Wow, they sell alcohol now I heard about that. Wow,
since they did that.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
But you know, things change sure as this boy, these
these segues as did the story around the first game
of basketball, and we often know that. You know, sometimes
when you approve a writer to do your memoir, you
know they might you might give them access in exchange
for them writing a favorable account, you know, of your life.
(21:19):
Like what's happened with this Elon Musk book that just
came out. Apparently the writer has already retracted the way
he characterized Elon shutting down these Starlink satellites. You know
that we're supposed to aid the Ukraine in that conflict.
He basically came out and said that the way he
wrote it in the book was a mistake. And he's
always kind of had a history of being a little
(21:40):
cow twy to mister Musk as opposed to like this
this being a tellof so one could imagine there's a
similar situation with mister Nasmith because the account in the book.
It's weird though, because he told the rough and tumble
account himself, so it's not like he would be opposed
to that being out in the world. Yeah, but maybe
he wanted the official that's in his book to be
(22:01):
I don't know. The guy doesn't strike me as a liar,
A little bit of a kook, but not a liar.
But according to the memoir, it was a It was
just a smashing success and nothing could have gone more swimmingly.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Right, So what is most likely I would I would
guess what is most likely here is that there was
some diplomacy in the telling of the story in the memoir.
And then as the guy ages he's got his legacy,
he's not worried about getting in trouble. You know, now
he's a sports legend. Yeah, so now he's a good
he's just telling the fun version of the story. We
(22:36):
know that the bones of it are true. He did
invent what becomes basketball. He did have to he did
have to maintain control over a bunch of rowdy kids,
and he was coming in hot because the pe teacher
before him just couldn't get the kids interested in anything.
So this embellishment about it being violent if it's untrue.
(23:02):
According to how to Watch Basketball Like a Genius by
Nick Green, the embellishment probably came about because the first
game might have been very boring.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, finish with a score of one to nothing, So
what is this soccer? That's snoozer material right there?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Not good.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
A student by the name of William Chase got the
only basket in what maybe would be considered a three
pointer today, you know, a real half court you know,
fling right, heavo, So he obviously was the was the
star player. The floor of the gym where all this
went down measured thirty five by fifty four, so this, yeah,
(23:44):
this would have been basically, based on current kind of standards,
a mid court shot.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, this is like, yeah, he's he's half half a
court away. That's epic. That's like Steph Curry level. And
the game was clumsy, maybe more than a little chaotic,
And then Naismith later wrote, this is this is such
a weird cold burn. He says, there's no teamwork, but
each man did his best.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Great, what does that mean? Anssipation Award.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Is there a guy like popping and locking the corner?
Who knows?
Speaker 3 (24:18):
I do think, you know, we'll get to some of
Naismith's more out there ideas about the human species, but
you start to get hints at it with his theory
that young men needed competition inherently and they had to
fulfill some kind of play instinct, which just really feels
like looking at man as as an animal in a
(24:40):
lot of ways, you know, like like a primitive beast,
which is not I'm not saying that's not there's not
some truth to that at times, but it does seem
like this guy he had some he had some ideas.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, to jump in here real quick. You'll actually hear that.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
A lot of people who argue like pro like NFL
pro football will say that it's like it's a up
substitute for war. It very much is, and you know
football is very much trench Warfairly, it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, and so that is an argument for it. So
you say that I wanted to jump in and just
toss that in. Let's do this sound cute.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Phone and he drops in the knowledge just for you.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
So good, there we go. You know, I agree with you.
When Noel and r pal Matt Frederick whom you just heard, folks,
we did an episode of this is many many moons
ago on sports as a substitute for war, and the
psychology is there, which is why you know, Max thought
I was joking when I was like, I don't know,
(25:44):
update the rules. Give them some not lethal firearms, but
like give them, you know, give them some like something heavy.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Or we could just you know, post some like sniper turrets.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Have you seen that thing?
Speaker 3 (25:55):
There's a meme or a video meme where it's like
shots from American Sniper where Bradley Cooper's you know, the American,
the titular American sniper and he's popping off shots. And
then it's showing that those moments where male soccer players
just fall down and clutch themselves when they're literally brushed
by another player. Apparently it's like a thing. And then
(26:16):
compare it to women's soccer where they just play on
with like blood gushing out of their eye sockets and stuff.
I mean, it's pretty comical.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
American Gladiator James N. Smith would have loved American Gladiator.
You guys, remember that show.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Dude, I went and saw them and Augusta when I
saw him live, they did. There's there's a there's a
documentary about the American Gladiators on.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Netflix right now.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
And surprise, surprise, they were all a bunch of juicers.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
What like like uh.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Not the Orange Variety never guessed. Apparently lots of orgies
happening in the locker rooms too between Can you imagine
that like a juiced up orgy like that?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I'm just imagining the smell, And I wish I wasn't.
As he said, nay Smith, little wonky. We opened with that.
You gotta be kind of eccentric to say I'm an
inventor sport. And originally the students who, by the way,
again are on board with this from game one, you know,
(27:16):
they got black eyes, dislocated shoulders, scores to settle. They say, ah,
mister Inn, you should call this Naysmith ball bro And
he said, well, we've got to basket, We've got the ball.
Let's just call it that.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
If it had been a box, it would have been
box ball.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Or if it had been a basket in a box,
it would have been basketbox. He's being very reasonable. I
think so too. I'm glad he's a ball though, and
so we wanted to share some of the rules that
he codified. You know, he's so he's basically he's the
Moses of basketball, right. So here's what he puts on
his tablets. He says, like you played out earlier, I
(27:57):
don't want the players to move when they're holding the ball.
That's kind of why rugby gets violent. And he really
he has this moment where he says, look, if you
can't roam with the ball, we don't have to have
people be tackled. Right, And if you if you listen
to his and we can laundry list them to or
some of them. But if you listen to his original rules,
(28:19):
what's surprising is they don't seem like they all apply
to basketball today. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
I mean again, I'm not what you'd call a sports fan,
so I don't really I know the basics of the
rules of basketball, but a lot of these didn't seem familiar.
I think we should list themun because they're pretty pretty fascinating.
The ball may be thrown in any direction with one
or both hands.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Okay, makes sense. Yet the ball may be batted in
any direction with one or both hands, never with the fist.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
God help you if you use a fist. This isn't volleyball,
this basketball.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I mean, that's a great way to knox one's tooth
out is to hit a basketball with a fist.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
But also a slap will get it going pretty fast too.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Sure it also something that rule of particular feels like
it was written for one kid with like a bad
whole life. It was just like, I just want to punch.
Just picture that Arthur Meme.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
You know, fist, you know, fist, Yeah, you know there's
there's there's rage in that fist. A player cannot run
with the ball. The player must throw it from the
spot on which he catches it. I love these very
gendered rules as well. By the way, allowance to be
made for a man who catches the ball when running
at a good speed. Wait, allowance to be made for
(29:34):
a man who catches the ball when running at a
good if.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
You're running, they throw the ball while you're running and
you catch it. He's saying, you.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Don't have to like like put on the brakes and
still like a cartoon character.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
So how it adventually progresses.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
You can take a step without dribbling, which there's also
like the euro maneuver and stuff like that, which is
ways to manipulate that without breaking the rule.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And you have to hold the ball in your hands
or between your hands. The next rule. You can't tuck
it in your pits, between your thighs, between your head
and neck. You can't just bend it behind one knee.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Unless you're in the Harlem Globetrotters' but that's more like a.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Show later on. Yeah, so tremendous basketball player. Sure, of course,
the arms or body must not be used for holding
the ball. That's right.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
No shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or striking or karate chops
in any way. The person of an opponent shall be allowed.
That's like a Yoda sentence, Right, no shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping,
or striking anyway. The person of an opponent shall be allowed.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
And he didn't just say the opponent, the person of
an opponent, which sounds very legalistic, but I love the
idea of you know, it was probably fictional. I love
the idea again, of the these rules being written for
one really violent kid, like as soon as the whistle blew,
he just did a roundhouse. Yea, someone totally cold cock them. Yeah, Uh,
(31:04):
this continues.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
This is actually this is we get into something that
I think, I mean, some form of this obviously still
exists today. The first infringement of this rule by any
players shall count as a foul. The second shall disqualify
him until the next goal is made, or if there
was evident intent to injure the person for the whole
of the game. No substitute allowed. Max Is this in
(31:26):
any way resembling the foul system of modern basketball?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Kind of?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
It is a So this's a sub sect of fouls
called flagrant fouls. Is a flagrant one, a flagrant two.
So a flagrant one is like when you like injure
someone by a kind of negligence, like like you know,
you're not like attempting to injure them, but you shouldn't
have done what you did. And what that what that
is is the team. I think traditionally there's there's different situations.
(31:53):
You get two free throws and the ball, so it's
much higher than a regular poule, which is just two
free throws or the ball.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
And then if someone gets two flagrant ones in a game,
they get ejected from the game, and there's a flagrant
two which is like, no, no, no, man, you weren't even
trying to like, you know, go for the ball. You
were just trying to tackle this guy in the air.
Then you're first and second degree murderer. That that's what
I was thinking. It's like manslaughter and murder. Yeah, manslaughters one,
murders two and two. You're immediately ejected from the game.
(32:21):
But you know, when these rules are written, I don't
think they had bench players because you know basketball, you
always changing.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
It does say no substitutions in a lot of these rules.
I'm going to use the word flag or the phrase
flagrant foul way more off total noun, like you've committed
a flagrant foul. And yeah, so we've got that rule
does matter. And then they go on to define some
of the ideas of what a foul is. So rule
six is a foul is striking at the ball with
the fist violation of rules three, four and as such
(32:50):
as described in rule five. So he just says this
is what a foul is. I think he starts counting fouls.
If either side makes three consecutive fouls, then the other
team gets a point. It shall count as a goal
for the opponents. What does consecutive mean? It's good, but
it's not perfect because the clock on consecutive fouls starts
over whenever the other team does something nest. Yeah, and
(33:12):
there's no mention of penalties of like involving free throws
or like extra opportunities to get points. There's a way
that these consecutive fouls translate into free points, you know,
for the opposing team. But it doesn't like there's no
you know, mini game, which I would say.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
That'd be great. It's kind of well, that's kind of
what a free throw is.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
It's like, oh, we we've triggered this event, and now
you don't necessarily get it. Would you get the opportunity
to get it?
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah? And then what is a goal? He says. A
goal is made when the ball is thrown or batted
from the grounds into the basket and it stays in
the basket. Remember the basket saw as a bottom providing
those defending the goal do not touch or disturb the goal.
If the ball rests on the edge and the opponent
moves the basket, it counts as a goal. That's way different.
(33:57):
That's very different.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Ah, yes, no, but goltending is still a call at
least in an American basketball it's not international in FEBA.
But like so, if the ball is above the basket
and a team touches it, it's either offensive interference, which
is to turnover no basket, or it's goltending automatic basket.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
But Foeba's way cooler because Foeba you can just rip
it off top of the rim tight. So there's also
there's also the idea of a ball going out of bounds.
We all remember this, You've seen it in every basketball game.
When the ball goes out of bounds, it shall be
thrown into the field of play by the person first
touching it. In case of a dispute, the umpire the
(34:36):
ref shall throw it straight into the field. The thrower,
in which is a cool title, gets five seconds to
do it. If he holds it longer, it automatically goes
to the other team. If any side persists in trying
to delay the game, then they get a foul.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
The umpire shall be judged of the men and shall
note the fouls and notify the referee. When three consecutive
fowls have been made, he shall have power to disqualify
men according to rule five. I'm sorry an umpire in basketball.
Yeah they changed it, yeah lasphemy. Yeah yeah, so uh okay,
but we do we have a referee, right exactly. So
(35:14):
the next rule, the referee shall be judge of the
ball and shall decide when the ball is in play
in bounds to which side it belongs, and she'll keep
the time. He shall decide when a goal has been
made and keep account of the goals, with any other
duties that are usually performed by a referee. So the
way it's written, it sounds like there's a bath and
an umpire, but now they're the same guy. That makes sense.
(35:35):
Seems like it's convoluted to have both.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Well, no way, it could be one of those things.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
So like in football, there's like a ref there's an umpire,
there's like all the different people have a different type.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Of jurisdiction brand Yeah, I get it. But then basketball
you just have referees and baseballly you just have umpires.
There's no jurisdiction for them. Yeah, I don't know. It
seems like basketball is.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
A little more of a of a ni kind of
sport too, like where one person could probably keep track,
it's not like an insane number of players.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
And it's similar in some ways to like how soccer works.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Were, like the refs move up and down the field,
and so when you're on this part of the field,
they're assigned to like this section and stuff like that.
So like everyone's kind of calling similar things in a
basketball game, which.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Goes to show too that a ref in basketball, or
maybe in any sport, particularly in basketball, not not so
much in baseball, has to be pretty fit because they
got to keep right moving, bobbing and weaving and running along.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
And that's where it's different than like football is because
you have like this guy's job is to make sure
everyone's on side, along with a couple of other calls.
But like they're very much more specialized jobs for football referees.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And there's there's more to look at too, right. Also,
the weird system of how they outline a first down
on the stadium or on the on the field is
pretty fascinating. Still, all that eludes me a down. It's
Greek to me.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
It's fine. I'm fine with it keeping it that way.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
You're there for the commercials, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
I'm there to hear other people's hot takes on the commercials.
I don't even need to see the commercials themselves.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
I love going to live sports games for the energy,
and I love concessions food. I know it's super trash,
but I I I know those nachos are not worth
twelve dollars or whatever. That color does not exist in nation,
but it hits different. That's hit different especially.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
You know what I really like is French fries at
a baseball game, smothered.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
In catch up directly on the fries. Amazing.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
That at leaks for me as the nostalgic things I
used to play Little league and then go to little
league games. That's just a classic sport. You know, snack
like peanuts at faseball. That's how I feel too.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah. The next rule is the time shall be two
to fifteen minute halves with five minutes rest between. And
the final rule this is again from our pal Nick Greens.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
You don't talk about fight club as you.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Don't talk about fight Club, That's right, James Nasmith, inventor
of fight Club. Chuck Palainook has been lying to you.
Uh No. The last rule is the side making the
most goals and in that time in that time window
will be declared the winner. If there is a draw
and the captains of the teams agree, then they can
just keep playing in kind of a death mode record.
(38:10):
Scratch that foul ball.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
We're we're we're ding dong, ding dong.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
We're successfully making this one of the seven times out timeouts?
We get is it times out or is it timeouts?
Time outs? Unclear timeouts? It's not like attorneys General. Okay,
we're taking we're taking the bass. There's so much more
to explore about the world of basketball thanks to our
research associate.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Doctor Z's that's right, not to be confused with doctor J. J. Jay,
who is an important figure in the early days of basketball.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
That's doctor J's name. I almost got it. Hold on,
hold on, then I see googling. I have googling. I
can tell you hold on almost. Oh gosh. What is
the male name that is most likely to begin with
a J that is not Justin.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
Or Jason Johnson close Jensen.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Also, I have a part two's question. Oh boy, oh,
now I'm trying too hard and it's gone. What is it?
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Julius Julius Irving, Julius Irving.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
What league did he play in? And b L No,
you played at the American Basketball Association.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
There was two leagues. There's the NBA and the ABA,
and they they've went together. Hey, man, if I put
together a trivia team, do you want to be the
sports ringer. I'm looking for a new sports ringer.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Sure, it's it's about forty five thousand dollars a year
to retain me.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
That sounds pretty reasonable. Actually, I mean, I'd like you
take it in bar tabs. I'd like it for you
to pay me.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Feat.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I take it in a French fries covered in ketchup boom.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
All right, a delicacy. This will all make sense later.
Thanks also or not or not. Thanks also to our
super producer, mister Max Williams. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka
the Quiz who else? Who else? Oh?
Speaker 3 (39:56):
You know all the hits, Alex Williams who composed He's
Jeff Coates. Chris rossiotis here in spirit, the works You
Me and the Devil Makes Three.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Basketball is fun. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
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