The Shot That Changed Basketball

Basketball during the first thirty years of its history was a static, mostly slow paced and earthbound game. Shooting was confined to occasional hook shots or the “set shot”, a one or two-handed shot with both feet kept firmly on the floor. Then, in the 1930s and 1940s, players began to look for new ways to improve shooting. The result of their efforts helped create the game known today.

The First Jump Shooters

• Basketball historian John Christgau in his The Origins of the Jump Shot makes a strong case that Kenny Sailors of the University of Wyoming and an early pro player was the creator of the pure jump shot. As a young boy on his Wyoming farm in the mid-1930s, Sailors often played one-on-one with his older, much taller brother. In order to compensate for his height disadvantage, Sailors learned to jump straight in the air and release a then unheard of one-handed shot from above his head.
• A strong argument can also be made that “Jumping” Joe Faulks was also one of the “fathers” of this shot, honing his skills with it in his mid-1930s Kentucky hometown. He later attended Murray State and then played from 1946 to 1962 with the NBA’s Philadelphia Warriors, during which time he popularized the jump shot in professional basketball. For several years he held the NBA record for most points in a game (63) before it was broken by Elgin Baylor (73) and then Wilt Chamberlain (100).
• Hank Luisetti, although not a pure jump shooter like Sailors and Faulks, also deserves credit for being a pioneer in shooting. A few years before the two were developing their shooting styles, Luisetti was developing a unique shot on the San Francisco playgrounds. It was a running, jumping one-hander called a “step and shoot” that was released while on the way up, similar to today’s “floater” or “tear drop” shot. In 1938, while playing for Stanford, Luisetti scored 50 points against Duquesne and imitators of the “step and shoot” soon followed.

Other Early Jump Shot Contributors

• Myer “Whitey” Skoog first used the shot in a Minnesota high school game in 1944. He later became an All-American at the University of Minnesota and played on several world championship teams for the NBA Minneapolis Lakers.
• John “Mouse” Gonzalez, a.k.a. Barton, first used the jump shot at a San Francisco YMCA in 1942. Gonzalez later played for San Francisco State University. Basketball Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell claims that Gonzalez was the first jump shooter on the West Coast.
• John “Bud” Palmer, a native Californian, first experimented with the shot at New England’s Phillips-Exeter Academy in 1939. It became his trademark at Princeton University during the early 1940s. Palmer played for three years for the New York Knicks and later became a network sports announcer.
• Davage “Dave” Minor was raised in Indiana where he began shooting jumpers in his Gary high school gym in 1937. He later played for UCLA, the powerful Oakland Bittners of the AAU, and was one of the NBA’s first black players.
• Johnny Adams developed a flat trajectory jump shot in the mid-1930s. He later attended his home state University of Arkansas and led the Razorbacks to the Final Four in 1941. Curt Gowdy, the late veteran sportscaster, always believed that Adams was actually the first jump shooter.
• Belus Van Smawley was a North Carolinian who played for Appalachian State University and in the NBA. Noted for his jumping ability, Smawley in the 1930s developed a unique shot. Starting with his back half to the basket, he would jump, twist toward the basket and shoot as he rose. Thus, it could be reasonably argued that he was the inventor of the turn-around jump shot.

Sources:

Christgau, John. The Origins of the Jump Shot (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1999)

Fried, Joshua. “Shooting Star” (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Magazine, March/April 2003)

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