Naismith-Award - Roche Sculpture
Naismith-Award
Naismith Award
THE NAISMITH GOOD SPORTMANSHIP AWARD
The Naismith Good Sportsmanship Award is rapidly gaining recognition as the most beautiful historic award in sports.
Unique among sports honors, most of which are granted annually after a competitive process, the Naismith Good Sportsmanship Award is given on an ad hoc basis.  Recipients are selected by the Naismith International Basketball Foundation for their role in furthering the values of fun, respect, and teamwork that Dr. Naismith wrote into the games “original rules”.
The large award which stands two-and-a-half feet tall and weighs 70 pounds features a specially commissioned three-dimensional sculpture of Dr. Naismith standing in a YMCA of the 1890’s.  The work is based on photographs of Dr. Naismith and the YMCA facility where he invented basketball in the winter of 1891.  The renowned artist Michael Roche, who specializes in highly detailed collectibles, created the sculpture.  His work has included western “gunslingers”, characters from the Wizard of Oz and numerous sports figures from the first half of the century.
The Award’s massive base incorporates three plaques- two of which are inscribed with the full text of Dr. Naismith’s game rules.  A third, central plaque includes a quote from Dr. Naismith on sportsmanship and is inscribed, “in recognition of significant and lasting contributions to the sport, and the spirit, of basketball.
The Award presented posthumously to Dr. Naismith bears the unique inscription: “In Recognition of the Invention of Basketball and a Life Lived with Honor.”
The first recipient of the Naismith Award was athlete of the century, Michael Jordan.  Click here to watch the presentation of the large Naismith Award to Michael Jordan.
Size: 8”h x 4½”w