The origin of the jump shot

For the first decades of basketball, players shot with both feet planted on the floor. The standard was the set shot, often taken with two hands from chest height while standing still. It was accurate enough, but it had a fatal weakness: because the shooter stayed on the ground and released slowly, a defender could get a hand up and block or disrupt the attempt. Scoring was harder and lower, and the game looked very different from today's.

The jump shot changed everything. Instead of shooting flat-footed, a player leaps into the air and releases the ball at or near the top of the jump. Rising above the defender and shooting from height makes the ball far harder to block, and the quick, upward motion is difficult to time. It took real athleticism and practice, but it gave shooters a way to get their shot off against tight defence that the old set shot never could.

The jump shot did not appear overnight or from a single inventor; it developed gradually around the middle of the twentieth century as a number of players began experimenting with shooting on the move and in the air. As its advantages became obvious, more and more players adopted and refined it, and coaches who had once resisted the riskier technique came to embrace it. Over time it went from a novelty to the standard way to shoot.

The jump shot transformed basketball into a faster, higher-scoring and more spectacular game. It made long-range shooting viable and eventually helped give rise to the modern emphasis on the three-pointer. Almost every shot in the game today, from a pull-up to a catch-and-shoot three, is a descendant of that basic breakthrough. What began as a daring alternative to the set shot is now simply how basketball is played.