Description

The Basketball Hall of Fame commemorative coins are a series of coins to be issued by the United States Mint in 2020. It celebrates the game and the 60th anniversary of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. All of the coins in this three-coin program (gold $5 coin, silver dollar, and clad half dollar) share common designs and dome-shaped (curved to resemble a basketball).

In early December 1891, Canadian Dr. James Naismith, a physical education professor and instructor at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training School (YMCA) (today, Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts was trying to keep his gym class active on a rainy day. He sought a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied and at proper levels of fitness during the long New England winters. After rejecting other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in gymnasiums, he wrote the basic rules and nailed a peach basket onto a 10-foot (3.05 m) elevated track. Naismith called the new game "Basket Ball".

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is an American history museum and hall of fame, located at 1000 Hall of Fame Avenue in Springfield, Massachusetts. It serves as basketball's most complete library, in addition to promoting and preserving the history of basketball. Dedicated to Canadian-American physician and inventor of the sport James Naismith, it was opened and inducted its first class in 1959.