Before Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, Ray Allen and Reggie Miller and Larry Bird and Dale Ellis, there was Kenny Sailors. Sailors might not be as regarded as some of the aforementioned shooters, but he’s arguably just as important. It was in 1934, on a farm in Southeastern Wyoming, that Sailors, then a skinny 13-year-old, performed a move in a game against his brother that would change basketball history: He decided to forgo a two-handed set shot and instead jumped off the ground to shoot the ball with one hand.
Sailors himself doesn’t claim to be the first person ever to jump in the air while shooting a basketball, but if he wasn’t the first to shoot a jump shot, he is certainly among the reasons its popularity grew.