Sky Hook (1971)

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:35 AM -0500 12/18/03, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>    Which came first, the "rainbow" or the "sky"?
>    The LOS ANGELES TIMES should have coverage of Lew Alcindor's college
>career at UCLA in the 1960s.  Was the "sky hook" invented there?
>    Who is responsible for "rainbow jumper," and when?
>    The mention here of "point guard," Larry Horn's mention of his UCLA
>classmate, and the availability of online THE SPORTING NEWS (not
>helpful here) got
>me asking about "sky hook" and "rainbow jumper."
>
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>---------------------------------------------
>SKY HOOK
>
>     28 January 1971, POST-CRESCENT (Appleton, Wisconsin), pg.D3, col. 3:
>    _Lew Alcindor's_ hook shots, often referred to as "sky hooks," are things
>of beauty on the basketball court.
>
I recall Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul Jabbar) shooting those
elegant sky hooks for UCLA on occasion, but I don't recall the term
used until he became a pro, for the Milwaukee Bucks (whence the
reference in a Wisconsin paper above--the Milwaukee papers would be
good places to check as well).  It was only when he graduated and
began playing consistently against equally tall players that he
really needed to perfect the shot.  I dimly recall stories about how
he practiced it over and over again in the off-season, knowing that
it couldn't be blocked by his fellow 7-footers.  The NCAA outlawed
the dunk shot when Alcindor was about to become a sophomore in '66
and join the varsity (those were the days before freshman
eligibility), so he wouldn't have what non-UCLA folks saw as an
unfair advantage.  Both he and Coach Wooden later claimed the ban
(which was reversed after Alcindor turned pro) was a great aid for
his career, as it forced him to learn a full offensive repertoire.
If my timing is right, he joined the Bucks in the fall of '69, so the
papers from '69 or '70 would be the likely ones to feature a first
cite of "sky hook", but it was really his second year in Milwaukee,
1970-71, when the Bucks acquired Oscar Robertson and won the NBA
championship, that the shot became famous.  It was around that time
that he became Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

larry