Steph Curry helps jump shot make its way back
Few things in sports are more challenging than attempting to stand idly alongside a basketball court while others are out there shooting.
Few things in sports are more challenging than attempting to stand idly alongside a basketball court while others are out there shooting.
The sights and sounds - especially the sounds, those echoing thumps, squeals and swishes - are powerful sirens. And the more you fidget junkie-like, the more your brain and body scream for you to grab a ball and shoot.
Recently, watching 6-year-olds practice in a Virginia elementary school gym, I succumbed to the temptation. When one of their Biddy league's undersized balls bounded near my feet, I grabbed it and, ignoring all the calls of "Hey, here!" headed toward a deep corner.
I was home again. Setting my feet, I flexed my knees and lifted the ball into a shooting position. But instead of raising my right arm straight up as fundamentals dictate, I bent it at the elbow and moved the forearm parallel to the ground. My view of the basket now nearly obscured, I lifted myself a few inches off the court and released the shot from a point just above and to the left of my head.
"Johnny Jones for two!"
Jones, a long-ago Villanova star, popularized that spectacularly cool peek-a-boo jumper. While he was winning the Big Five player of the year award, thousands of Philly kids were trying to emulate the unorthodox shot that had earned it.
That was in the earthbound 1960s, of course, before the era of the dunk, back when the jumper was king and how you shot it your basketball signature.
The jump shot as a status symbol faded in the 1970s after Dr. J and others, in so many ways, elevated basketball. The gaudiness of the slam dunk, perfectly suited to that ostentatious decade, proved so appealing that jump-shooting, as basketball purists never failed to remind us, became a lost art.
Google "jump shot" and "lost art" and you'll find more laments than on an undertaker's home page.
Now, after a half century in the shadows, the long jump shot is back, its rebirth heralded by a striking Sports Illustrated cover last May.
In that photo, Steph Curry is releasing a three-pointer from the deep corner. The Warriors star's form is geometric perfection. His feet, well off the ground, are close set and directly beneath him. His right arm is fully extended, the follow-through wrist pointing downward, toward the court. And the ball, high above, is arcing softly toward its defenseless target.
Curry's technique is flawless. Herb Magee now uses the photo to illustrate his points to all the youngsters who flock to the Philadelphia University shooting guru's camps and clinics.
"Five, six, seven years ago, if you had asked me who the best shooter was, I'd have probably said Ray Allen," Magee said this week. "But this [Curry] is transcendent. In a game the other night, time was running out, and he hit a 40-footer. I've seen him do it from three-quarter court. It borders on the absurd."
Long-distance shooting is sexy again, an especially welcome tonic for an NBA that had grown too static and defensive.
And Curry is the Che Guevera of this revolution, a charismatic figure who's both wildly appealing and deadly. As his Warriors' title displayed, three-point mania is now impacting basketball the way home run fever changed baseball in the 1920s.
This shooting revival began decades ago with basketball's universal adoption of a three-point line. But it wasn't until the NBA discovered analytics and Curry became its MVP that the long jumper really reassumed its professional prominence.
Those developments opened the eyes of GMs, coaches and scouts, who finally understood that the three's extra point was a goal worth pursuing.
In the 1998-99 season, NBA teams averaged 13.2 three-point attempts a game. This season, thanks to the popularity and success of the Warriors, that average has jumped to 23.8. And you needn't look any farther than Johhny Jones' alma mater, Villanova, to realize things aren't much different in the college game.
"There's more focus on the three now because of Curry, no doubt," said Magee who, surprisingly, is not yet sold on a three-pointers-at-all-costs strategy. "He and Klay Thompson are two remarkable shooters. And any coach who knows what he's doing will play to his strengths.
"But there are a lot of teams, like ours, that still like to play through their forwards and centers."
Not nearly as many as there used to be, though.
"That's true" said Magee. "[Penn coach] Steve Donahue, that's his whole thing. He doesn't want to shoot any mid-range jump shots. He wants threes. . . . The thing is, it's a dangerous way to play because if you look at the percentages, even teams that are really good at it only shoot in the high 30s."
Not long ago, the New York Times reported on the death of Kenny Sailors, a Wyoming basketball star whom the story characterized as a jump-shot pioneer.
No one knows exactly who invented the jumper, though players such as Sailors, Paul Arizin, Joe Fulks and Hank Luisetti certainly contributed to its development. But its importance in popularizing basketball can't be overlooked. It was the dunk of its day.
The jump shot was, the Times noted, "a scoring technique that thrilled fans and helped transform a two-handed, flat-footed, essentially earthbound affair into the vertical game it is today."
Johnny Jones died recently, too, last September at 68. His contributions to the game can't be so easily appreciated.
Except by those who, at 66, aren't afraid to wander onto a court crowded with clawing 6-year-olds and launch one more peek-a-boo jumper.
@philafitz