Talk:James Naismith

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[edit] Infobox

Shouldn't there be an infobox rather than just a picture? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.158.117.220 (talk) 00:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Winningest coaches changed

Edited "Coaching Career" to reflect that Dean Smith and Adolph Rupp are not THE two winningest, but two OF the winningest coaches, now that Bobby Knight has overtaken Adolph Rupp's spot for #2. Now Smith and Rupp are #1 and #3, respectively, until Bobby Knight probably breaks Dean's record in a couple weeks. Tentonbricks 01:51, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What?

Did Naismith really have an MD? Those letters are after his name, but there's nothing in the bio about him having attended medical school or worked as a physician.

[edit] Holyoke, Massachusetts

Naismith lived in Holyoke, Massachusetts when he worked as a football coach for Springfield College, and invented Basketball. Holyoke, Massachusetts laudes being the "Home of Volleyball", and some also claim that Naismith invented Basketball at home not at work!!! rmac1954@iwon.com

[edit] The term "winningest"

"However, Naismith coached Forrest "Phog" Allen, who then became the one of winningest coaches in U.S. college basketball history, and his eventual successor."

Can anybody think of an actual word that could be used in place of 'winningest'.

"Winningest" is an actual word.

Mullet

  • I will keep that in but am removing the link because it is red anyhow. --Adam (talk) 16:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


  • "Winningest" is not a word:

Image:Winningest.png

PeteVerdon 16:35, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Ok, I will change the text to something better. --Adam (talk) 16:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Googling for 'winningest' retrieves many hits referring to coaches, teams and baseball pitchers. Some american dictionaries already list it as 'informal'. See the following usenet thread.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/browse_frm/thread/c6ac304e774bb766/735be628f9333140?lnk=st&q=winningest&rnum=2#735be628f9333140

Perhaps we want to be conservative and leave it out, but its used frequently enough that it will enter the dictionaries sooner or later.

Don't rely on the OED as the final word in what is or is not a proper word in English, OED recently added "bootylicious" as an official word to the lexicon. So if "bootylicious" is allowed, certainly something more usable such as "winningest" is as well.

There is no need to get into a long discussion as to whether the utterance "winningest" is, is not, or is about to become a word. Articles in the Wikipedia should be written in a reasonably formal tone and by no means could "winningest" be considered formal English. Greenshed 00:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Why not? Gnosticdogma 17:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Middle initial "A"

Could his name somehow be changed so that it doesn't include the middle initial "A"? James Naismith never had a middle name and never signed his name with the "A" initial. The "A" was added by someone in the administration at the University of Kansas.

[edit] Sigma Phi Epsilion affiliation

I have heard from multiple sources that it is true that Naismith was affiliated with Sigma Phi Epsilon; however, according to this article Naismith graduated from McGill, which does not have a chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter, nor does any other university in Canada. Does anyone have any input on this?

[edit] Women's rules

The sentence "Even Naismith felt that it was appropriate to modify the rules somewhat to account for the delicate nature of women." was changed on account of being POV, and rightly so. However, "Naismith felt that it was appropriate to modify the rules somewhat to account for his perception of women." is a garden path sentence -- it ascribes to Naismith an awareness of his own perception of women, which is not really the point. I took the sentence out altogether -- I think that either the grounds on which one would modify a sport's rules for women are obvious from the historical context, or they should be described in more detail -- bearing in mind that the article is about James Naismith and if opinions are ascribed to him, they should be sourced. Matuszek 19:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 08:13, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Legacy Section

Is this a joke? The word gymnasium is derived from James Naismith's name in honor of him??? C'mon, and his bother, John Arena built the first modern basketball venue? haha! Someone's got an active imagination and is really bored. March 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.148.82.197 (talk) 17:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)