The Story of My Jump Shot

by Kenny Sailors

I took my first jump shot in the yard of our farm [see map image below] outside of Hillsdale, Wyoming when I was 13 and in 8^th grade. That was 1934.

My older brother Bud and I [see image below] played against a hoop he made in shop class and mounted on a backboard on our windmill. The windmill was located just inside the corral fence next to the livestock watering tank. We often had to navigate around horses and cattle while we played.

I jumped in order to shoot over Bud who was 6’5” and a good athlete in high school. At that time I was probably 5’6” or 5’7.” I was a good jumper, and I found that was an advantage.

It was, as they say, a case of necessity being the mother of invention. You see when I shot flat-footed Bud kept batting the ball back into my face, and I got tired of that. He told me I was too short to play basketball.

One day I decided to jump and shoot and see what would happen. Bud said when I jumped he couldn’t figure out what I was doing, and then he saw me launch a shot while still in the air. Later on he used to laugh, reminding me the shot had missed everything – the rim, the backboard, in fact the whole windmill. But he told me that day the shot was a good idea and to keep practicing it.

I did – for the next decade - until I had it perfected after I returned from the Marines following World War II.

I’ve always said I don’t know who was the first to take some kind of a jump shot. I doubt if anyone knows that for sure.

It begins with defining a jump shot. If a jump shot is leaving the floor to shoot, then a layup or dunk are jump shots, too.

I never shot with two hands – always with one. A few years later, when I saw the great Hank Luisetti [see image below] shooting with one hand in an AAU tournament in Denver, I knew I was on the right track. But his shot wasn’t like the one I was working on. Luisetti’s was a running one-hander out of his dribble - or what Coach Ray Meyer of DePaul used to call a ‘step and shoot’.

I discovered I could get more height on my jump by shooting with one hand than with two. Shooting with two hands, normally with two feet on the ground, was the most common way in those days. So my one-handed shot was weird to many people – but it was legal as long as I got rid of the ball before coming back down.

The first time I took a jump shot in a real game was when I was in high school in Laramie, Wyoming. I played on the varsity my sophomore through senior years (1937-1939). Coach Floyd Foreman [see team image below] was skeptical. But he became a believer when he saw I could score with this shot. So he designed our offense to accommodate it. I was All-State my final two years.

At the University of Wyoming my coach, eventual Hall of Famer Everett Shelton [see image below], didn’t try to prevent me from shooting the jump shot because I could score with it. But he did think it was strange- just like my high school coach. He gave me the keys to the gym so I could go in and practice on my own. Like Coach Foreman, Shelton incorporated my shot into his offense.

I never had anyone to teach me the shot. No coach at that time had ever seen nor used it. So, I practiced and practiced on my own because I knew it was the key to being a successful little man in the sport I loved.

The first resistance to my jump shot from a coach came when I entered professional basketball in the fall of 1946 with the Cleveland Rebels. Our coach- Dutch Dehnert [see image below] - said my shot ‘won’t go in this league’ and that he’d teach me a two-handed set shot, instead. He was an old school guy. He also didn’t want me to dribble so much. But for me the jump shot and the dribble were linked, and I told the general manager I might as well go home. He told me to wait. In the meantime, because I wouldn’t obey the coach, I spent most of the first few weeks of my pro career on the bench until he was replaced in mid-season and I was free to shoot and play my way.

By early 1946 while I was still with Wyoming I had perfected the jump shot the way I wanted it. Not counting the years I spent in World War II it had taken 10 years of practice, patience, and persistence to refine it.

The photo by Eric Schaal in LIFE magazine in January 1946 vs. Long Island University in New York City [see image above] and another by a Wyoming photographer vs. Utah State the next month in Laramie [see image below] show best how I had developed the shot to my liking.

After much experimenting, I developed the jump shot to the point where by my senior year in college I could shoot it from as far back as the top of the key – and out of the dribble – with accuracy. Later, in professional basketball, I was able to do this from a standing position from anywhere on the floor – from the corners, the side, or out front.

A lot of my shots were from 8-12 feet out. I would dribble by my defender, take a couple more dribbles, and jump. As I penetrated with my dribble I tried to hit the outstretched arm of the defender in order to draw a foul or, at least, to knock him off balance.

I kept my arm cocked so that at the peak of my jump I had the option of passing to a big man underneath or shooting – all with a flick of my wrist and fingers. I called this use of my arm goosenecking because that’s what it looked like.

One of the things I had to practice a lot was releasing the ball at the top of my jump – not on the way up or down. Because I was a good jumper, I could shoot over any of the big men of that time. My shot never was blocked from in front - even in the professional leagues – and only once from behind.

I released the shot with the ball about 3-4 inches off the top of my head and a bit to the right so that my arm wouldn’t block my vision. I wanted to be squarely facing the basket. I used my non-shooting hand – my left hand – to guide the ball up when I jumped. It was placed on the side of the ball. My right hand was under the ball. At the last moment, when I was set to release the ball, I pulled my left hand away in order to make the shot with just my right hand – again using only the action of my wrist and fingers. I didn’t use the upward momentum of my body to shoot the ball, nor did my arm shoot it – it was just my hand. My feet were hanging straight down for good balance and usually pretty close together. People told me I had some ‘hang time’ as it is now called.

I was a very good dribbler – a skill I had practiced in keep-away games when I was in grade school. As long as I kept my dribble going, defenders couldn’t get too close to me because I was quick enough to go by them. That gave me enough space to shoot my jump shot and keep it from being blocked. I wanted to keep the defender guessing when I was going to stop my dribble and jump. I could run up to him, stop on a dime, and then leave the ground. But that took a lot of practice because I needed to go straight up while keeping my momentum from leaning my body forward and getting an offensive foul. I trained myself to go vertical instead of horizontal.

Shooting out of my dribble gave me more height than shooting from a standing position. I wanted to get as high as I could. Coach Ray Meyer of DePaul [see image below] once told me I jumped as high as 36 inches, but I think my normal jump was much less, maybe 24-30 inches. That was enough in an era when defenders were taught to keep both feet on the floor. It was a big reason I was never blocked from in front. My dribble and jump shot went together.

My jump shot was unique in the early 1940s. Other players had left the floor to shoot, but none did it like I did. Some used two hands when they jumped. I played in lots of arenas in the mountain west, the mid- west and the east coast. No one else had my shot that I ever saw.

The first person I ever saw with a shot like mine was when I started playing professional basketball after World War II. It was Bud Palmer. He played for New York [see image below]. He was still working on the release. I asked him where he got his shot. He said, ‘From watching you!’.

Today I see many kids practicing their shooting from too far out – often around the 3-point line. My advice to them is to begin from in close - maybe 6-10 feet away. Once they’ve mastered the shot from that range then it’s OK to go out farther when they’re strong enough. You can’t develop a good shot starting from far out. It may be glamorous but you can be a better shooter if you’re patient with expanding your range.

Conclusion

That day 80 years ago when I decided to jump and shoot over my big brother changed my life for all time. Even though I spent more years doing something other than playing basketball, I guess some people will always remember me for the one-handed jump shot that’s still used today. It hasn’t been the most important thing in my life, but I’m proud of it.

I’m closing in on 95 and it seems like I’ve never been busier than in the past 10 years. After returning from Alaska and following my wife’s death I just wanted to ‘retire’ and lie low in Laramie. But that wasn’t to be. I was rediscovered. So it goes . . . .

And - "it’s all the fault of that crazy jump shot!”.

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Typed from Kenny’s handwritten notes and many interviews with him while he was still living by Bill Schrage, an archivist for Kenny Sailors, and completed by 2015.