HOOK SHOT

A 'hook shot', in basketball, is a play in which the offensive player, usually turned perpendicular to the basket, gently throws the ball with a sweeping motion of his arm in an upward arc with a follow-through which ends over his head. Unlike the jump shot, it is shot with only one hand; the other arm is often used to create space between the shooter and the defensive player. Once the ball is in shooting position, the hook shot is one of the most difficult shots to effectively defend. However, prior to that point, as the ball is being brought up into position, it is very susceptible to being stolen from behind.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the National Basketball Association's all-time leading scorer, was well-known for his highly-effective 'sky hook', so named because of the height at which Abdul-Jabbar released the ball. Abdul-Jabbar was over seven feet tall, and he released the ball only when his hand was at the very top of his arm's arcing motion. Thus, once released, the sky hook was essentially impossible to block without committing goaltending. Some of the few players in history to ever successfully block one of Kareem's sky hooks were Wilt Chamberlain, Manute Bol, Ralph Sampson, Mark Eaton, Hakeem Olajuwon and Artis Gilmore.
Abdul-Jabbar's teammate Magic Johnson used a similar shooting technique during the 1987 NBA championship, which he termed the "junior sky hook." It proved similarly difficult to defend.

Contents

Sky Hook

See also

Sky Hook

A "hook shot" is more commonly known as a "sky hook." An athlete forms a hook as the basketball is released with one hand over the shoulder as the basketball is released. An athlete is airborne as the ball is released, which is why this is a "sky" hook, since they are "in the sky.""Sky hook" is a street expression that has become part of the basketball vocabulary gaining great acceptance across America and in the NBA.

See also

★ Basketball moves