Basketball in New Zealand Basketball in New Zealand The sport of basketball was first played in New Zealand in 1908. When basketball invented by the Canadian Dr James Naismith in 1891 it had failed to reach New Zealand until the early 1900s. A former Naismith student, J. H. Greenwood, introduced basketball to New Zealand when he was appointed physical director of the Wellington branch of the YMCA in 1908. The sport was called indoor basketball to avoid confusion with the English offshoot of basketball played by females outdoors. New Zealand women's basketball was renamed netball in 1970. The YMCA spread the game from the
James Naismith (chemist) investigates: His research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wellcome Trust and the European Union. Naismith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. His nomination reads: Naismith is also Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and in 2016 was elected a Fellow of the American Association