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- Come on, you guys!
You know I can't bend over.
Basketball was just about my whole life
when I was growin' up.
I wanted people to like me,
and like any kid when they're young,
and get a lot of attention, I suppose.
I've been asked over and over again,
"Did you start the jump shot?"
I've had sports writers get pretty upset with me
'cause that's what they want me to say.
What else could they talk about?
There's nobody today hardlyalive that saw me play.
I've experienced much in my lifetime.
I've had to let go of things
that were really important to me.
And I like I say, it'snice to know who you are,
and where you're goin'when you leave this world.
- The shot is the jump shot.
- It's up to Jenkins
for the championship!
Look at those little champions!
- The jump shot'sin every part of the game.
- Puts it up.
Yes!
- Nothing has ever changed a sport
like the jump shot changed basketball.
- Smart takes the shot!
- When you'retalking about the jump shot,
you're talking about the very fabric of the game.
- You don't realizethat there was a time
that there was no jump shot.
- When it was sideshot game, you needed space.
- You had to be wide open,
or you couldn't get your shot off.
- It's almost like they were playing
in slow motion defensively.
How you allowed that guyto even get that shot off.
- Basketball is a game of innovation.
Before you know it, you've made up something
that nobody has seen before.
- In Kenny Sailors' case, like Edison,
who would have known what thislittle light bulb could do?
- There's no question,
it was-- - The uniqueness
was they jumped. - We're talkin'
probably 65 years later,
that's the shot people are still taking.
- This shot lasted throughgenerations and generations,
and has made it to theWarriors, to Steph Curry,
the greatest shooter you'll ever play.
- Curry switched defense
behind the back!
Fires a three! - If I can't play
above the rim, so the jumpshot is my only weapon.
- Oh, he puts it in!
- You can go anywhere in the world,
and they're shooting Kenny's shot.
- Where is-- - Kenny Sailors.
- Kenny--- Sailors has few equals.
- He's an American original.
- People just forgot who he was.
- He disappeared for so long.- Sometimes history gets lost,
and that's what happenedwith Kenny Sailors' story.
History lost his story.
- Yeah, we're talkin'about the jump shot, right?
- Yeah-- - Or the guy
who found the jump shot, or somethin'?
- Do you know who that guy is?
- No.
- I don't know, 'cause, I mean.
- What do you mean
invented the jump shot?
No one invented the jump shot.
- Wait, there wasn't a jump shot at one point?
- First of all, there's skepticism.
Nah, I did.
- How do you know he was the first jump shooter?
I mean, that's everybody'sfirst question.
How you gonna call thisguy the first jump shooter?
- Let me see how dumb or how smart you are.
- I'd never really put a lot of thought into
who was the first guy that ever shot one.
- Okay, here's the deal.
Who is the guy that invented the jump shot?
- About eight years ago, I guess,
I started looking at, well,who could've done this?
- When I took over theFeatures Department at CBS,
the editor that leftleft me a pile of stories
that he thought would be worth pursuing,
and I was goin' through, and I saw
"Kenny Sailors, inventor of the jump shot".
The first time I ever heard the name.
- Are you sittin' down?
People think better on theirass than they do on their feet.
- There was a lot of tales andfables about this and that,
but I kept coming to thisstory of Kenny Sailors,
and it just led to Laramie,Wyoming of all places.
- You'll have enough wildstories to talk about
when you get back.
- Well, now you're next.
That one guy had to go.
- No, is that right?
- Yeah, he had to go to class.
- Okay, well.
- He's 90 goin' on 70.
He just keep on goin'.
- Right.
Yeah, I'll be up there too much
probably for too long. - See, well, yeah.
Well, you don't know how long.
- Well, how long could it be
when you-- - Well, you've probably
gone longer than you thought already.
- Oh, well, .
Don't ask me why.
I don't know.
Probably just to harass barbers like you.
- Every time he comesin here somebody knows him.
- He's pretty popular.
- I'm not popular, that jump shot's popular.
- That's what people are really intrigued with,
basketball and the jump shot.
The jump shot, the jump shot, the jump shot.
His whole life changed that day he decided
to jump in the air, and shoot over his brother.
- I grew up about seven oreight miles south of Hillsdale,
and Hillsdale, I don't imagine,
had 50 people in the whole town.
But anyway, basketball was their sport,
because they couldn't afford football,
or these other sports,
and, certainly, durin' the Depression.
My brother was a good ballplayer, and a good athlete,
and the coach liked him there in Hillsdale.
He told him he had a kid brother
who's just learned to play the game,
and that they'd surelike to have a basketball
he could take out, and give to him.
And, of course, we didn'thave any place to play,
but he fixed a backboard,
and we fastened it to the oldwooden windmill that we had.
We'd play one-on-one,
and I never could get a shot off,
and he really enjoyed that,
because he was 6'5 and I was just about,
I don't know, 5'7 probably.
He use to tell me that, "Youbetter find another game".
"This isn't your game."
"It's for big men, tall men."
- But when you think about the way
the game was played back then,
you kinda think of that old news reel footage.
It was the kind that happen, you know,
that paint drying paste.
- No shot clock.
No sense of urgency.
Obviously, it's antiquated,because it's where we started.
- It's athletic, because there'smovement and coordination,
but it feels slower.
It certainly is grounded.
- The standard rule was
you never leave your feet on defense,
and especially on offense.
It's a whole different game today.
- They hardly dribbled theball, passed it around.
The guys shootin' set shots.
- They all shot a two-handed shot.
Push out here from the chest.
- You know, if you were gonnashoot a two-hand set shot
you had to be wide open.
- I don't know if set shot off today.
Have to be 50 feet away from the guy.
- You couldn'thave anybody close to you
who would just put a handup, and block your shot.
- If a shot has to be constructed
over a period of one, two, three seconds,
the game is slowed by definition.
- If you look at some of these guys now,
like a Westbrook, or somethin',
they way they fly down thecourt, and jump on the gym.
Looks almost like a differentsport than back then.
- It'll tell you, man, if Iwas born like 60 years earlier
I would've been in the NBA, no doubt.
- I think I'd be a monster.
- Oh, I would've gotten somebuckets, that's for sure.
- Yeah, I feel like a little step back,
or a between the legs crossover,
we'd throw somebody into the first row.
- High on the board, Sailors.
I just made up my mindthat I was gonna find a way
to shoot the ball over the guy.
My brother, he made up his mind,
"I'm gonna frustrate that little squirt,
and not even let him get a shot off".
Somehow, the idea come to me is,
well, if I jump up, and I knew I could jump,
if I jump up high enough outof my dribble, like this,
I dribbled up,
and from here, right on thedribble, I jumped straight up,
and bring the ball up right over my head,
and I let it go, and the thing went in,
and I was just as surprised,or more than he was,
and the ball went in the basket.
His feet was on the ground.
He hadn't even left the floor.
Boy, that spooked him.
He said, "That's a good shot, Kenny".
"You have to get better at that."
Well, I started workin' on it from that time on.
Mom wanted Bud to go to college.
She sold the farm, and we boughtthat home here in Laramie.
I graduated high school in the spring of '39.
Entered the university to play basketball.
- The University of Wyoming hired Ev Shelton
to coach the basketball at Wyoming.
- He was a remarkable guy.
Charming beyond belief.
On the floor he elicited the greatest respect.
- He'd didn't curse me.
Come up to you, and say,
"Did you hear what I said?",
and leave little knobs in your head.
- He didn't have to shout at ya.
He just had to look at ya.
- When he came, he said to us,
"Now, I've won nationalchampionships in AAU ball".
He said, "I wanna win acollege national championship".
He told us right off.
- Kenny and his fellow teammates were freshmen,
and freshmen were not eligible in those days.
- He didn't think too much of us
yellow punk Wyoming freshmen.
Nearly every one of us, LewRoney, Volker, and Shadow Ray,
and myself, and Collins,
and Weir, of course, he'sthe big man from Green River,
we were all all-state players, you know?
So we did have a prettyhigh opinion of ourselves.
He says, "We're gonna geta team here at Wyoming".
"It's gonna win a national championship."
"And I don't know if you're the boys
that's gonna do that, or not."
- That year, the varsity squad
was lead by junior star, Willie Rothman,
and future sports broadcaster, Curt Gowdy.
- The freshmen scrimmaged the varsity,
but Kenny and Jim Weir, they let it be known
that they thought they were better.
- We thought we didn't have
any trouble scorin' on 'em.
We got to braggin' and teasin' 'em
until the point that Sheltongot kinda fed up with it.
So Shelton one day come in, and announced,
he says, "I'm gonna arrange agame for you cocky freshmen".
- Shelton went and scheduleda game, and sold tickets,
and I think Shelton'sidea was he was gonna put
Jim Weir and Kenny Sailors in their place.
- We played 'em, and we beat 'em.
- Kenny Sailors and hisfreshmen beat the varsity,
and beat 'em pretty well.
- They only had the 31.
Weir and I had a combination between us,
the same number of pointsthat the varsity had.
- He was the governor out there.
He controlled the ballgame.
- Shelton didn'tsay much right at the time.
I think he was about half embarrassed,
as was the varsity team.
He didn't expect to lose that game, I'm sure,
or he'd a never played it.
- For all of us growing up in the 1940s,
we all wanted to play ballat the University of Wyoming.
- Our dad would take us to games.
- We would go into the dressing room,
and meet all these guys, MiloKomenich, Weir, and Volker.
- They werewonderful guys, and Kenny,
that was the one youalways kind of focused on.
- When people have asked me
why I didn't date thegirls, I said, "Well, I do".
"I have a steady, and she'sabout that big around."
"I go with her all the time."
I wanted to be a good basketball player,
and girls just didn't fit into that for me.
A friend of mine, Stan Hathaway,
he was workin' for his boardover in the Kappa house.
One time he came over at the union, and he said,
"Kenny", he says, "You'rereally missin' it".
"We got the prettiest girls on the campus
over there in the Kappa house,
especially one girl that wehave over there's from Casper."
Her name was Marilynne Corbin.
- She was a cheerleader for the
football and the basketball team,
and she was the drum majorette,
and threw the baton up in theair at the head of the band.
- Anyway, he came in one day
with these four beautiful girls,
and I was sittin' theretalkin' with Stan mostly,
'cause I was too embarrassedto talk to the girls,
and right there in front of 'em, all of 'em,
he said, "Kenny", he said,
"Do you know our Phi Deltdance is this weekend?"
I said, "I don't dance, Stan".
"You know that."
I'd forgot all about it, ordidn't even know about it.
Yeah, and he said,
"You know, that's somethin'you oughta take Marilynne to".
Right there in front of her.
She pipes up, he coached her, no doubt,
she says, "Well, I don'tcare about dancin' anyway".
"We'll just go have somefun, if you wanna take me."
- Did you guysgo on dates in the outdoors?
- Yeah, we sure did, didn't we, Bokie?
- Go on picnics.
- That sounds romantic.
- We started goin' together,
and went steady the rest of the year,
and then that summer we were married.
- She was funny.
She had a sense of humor, she did.
She had a great Tarzan yell,
and I guess, and thoughtit would've been real fun
to know her when she was20, and I grew up with her,
'cause she was a lot of fun.
- She was a beautifulwoman, for one thing,
but her beauty was a lotdeeper than just on her skin.
- They had a really loving relationship,
and he and she complimentedeach other really well.
Grandma was definitely very independent,
and she was her own woman,
and I feel like that's whygrandpa loved her so much.
- She just had a wonderful personality,
and, of course, her values, and her thinking
was just what a husband really wanted.
- In those days, the coachcould not talk with the team
during the game at all.
Nobody was allowed to interfere with
a play of the game even during timeouts.
So guess who told the team what to do?
The captain on the floor, that was Kenny.
- Everybody became confident
in what they did through Kenny,
because they knew they had a guy
who could elevate them as a team.
- A lot of people ask, "Didn'tyou play with Kenny Sailors?"
I said, "Yeah, I sure did".
"Describe him."
"A rattlesnake."
- As mild and as gentle as he is,
when it comes to competition,he'd tear your throat out.
- That's what he was,
the quickest guy I ever saw on the court
with his hand and his feet.
- Ken would fake a drawing,
and step back, and be in the air
by the time the defensivemen would get to him.
- When I watched Kenny Sailors,it actually blew me away.
- If you saw Kenny Sailorsplay, you saw the jump shot.
- Ken Sailorsof Wyoming sinks this one.
- He was ahead of his time.
- The first time I ever saw a guy do that.
Kenny shot one in, and onhis way up, he was great.
- No one shot thatup until then like he did.
- I would pay money to seewhoever's defending Kenny
that first time he roseup, and shot a jump shot,
just to see like thesnapshot of that guy's face.
As he's like comin' down in transition, rises up,
and the guy's like, what is goin' on?
This has gotta be atravel or somethin', like.
- Ev Shelton had no idea what to do with that.
There were no coaches that were
teaching that skillset, or fundamental,
but he had enough sense to let him shoot it.
- That speaks to the selflessness of the coach, to me,
and it allowed Kenny to thrive,
and it was goin' against the grain of the time,
but that's really
one of the hallmarks of anyoutstanding coach, in my mind.
- Shelton had an advanced offense
for those days in basketball.
- It was called the Shelton Weave,
which put him in the NationalBasketball Hall of Fame.
- The main thing about it was
he knew how to set insideand outside screens.
- It would pull the big men out,
and they weren't use to playing on the outside.
- Finally, somebody would be open.
- Once they startedplaying well and winning,
then nobody wanted to play 'em,
'cause what do you have towin if you beat Wyoming?
- Wyoming is not an easy place to get to,
especially when thebasketballs start bouncing
from November to March.
- I think they have always feared
coming up to play in Wyoming.
- The University of Wyomingis sitting at altitude
of whatever feet, and all youcan do is get winded and lose.
- And we made a big sign up, you know,
"How you breathin' with 7,000 feet?"
- You playin' one team, they had an oxygen tank,
and masks on the sideline.
I said "Are you kiddin' me?"
- Shelton said, "They won'tcome here to 7,000 feet".
"We've tried to get teamsall over the nation."
"They won't come up here to place us."
"They're scared of us."
So he said, "We're gonna go to them".
- All aboard!
- Everett Sheltondid something in those days
teams wouldn't do anymore.
He took his team on the road.
- Coaches who are coaching for
their livelihood are gonna say,
"I'd rather go 18 and three
against the guys around the block",
but he was coaching to wina national championship.
- I'd never been on a train before in my life.
Never been out of the state of Wyoming.
None of us kids had.
We were just a bunch ofcountry kids, most of us.
- Ev Shelton wanted to go where
they could get the best competition.
- They did a whistle stop tour,
and they'd stop the train along the way,
and play games againstanyone that would play 'em.
- That's what we did.
We'd go all up and down that East Coast.
We played all over thecountry anybody we could play.
- The 1942/43season, it really ranks with
one of the great seasons of all time.
- They not only took the challenge,
they went out and beat teamafter team away from home,
gaining even more respect nationally.
- Their road record was unbelievable.
- They played 33 games.
They won 31.
And their only two losses were on the road.
- They were dominant,
and they were dominant with a flair.
- Shelton, he finally got to the point
where he'd say to us, "Now,boys, you're good enough,
you can beat anybody".
"There isn't anybody can beat you."
- Going undefeatedin conference play
put them into the NCA Tournament.
- Wyoming playedOklahoma first, and then Texas,
in order to advance to thefinals in Madison Square Garden.
- You didn't getto Madison Square Garden,
you didn't get filmed, andyou didn't get photographed.
- It's the mecca of sports.
Everything has happened there.
- If you played at the Garden,
can't get any higher than that.
- For a team like Wyomingto come into New York City
in the spotlight on the biggest basketball stage
in the country is reallya remarkable achievement.
- When they traveled to New York,
they may as well have beengoing to another planet.
- They turn all the lights off,
and we come runnin' out one at a time
with the spotlight on us,
and they'd announce our names, you know?
Whoo, that was a big dealfor a country boy like me.
- Thisgame developed into a thriller
from the very first play.
The best planned has playedin New York this season.
- Georgetown was tough.
I mean, they were a good ball club.
We didn't beat 'em by that much.
- Kenny, he got onthat big stage, and performed.
- Kenny Sailors was the most outstanding player
of the NCAA Tournament.
That's a resume that not very many people
across basketball historycan really speak to.
- They really captured the attention
of New York and the New York media,
which at that time, meantcapturing the attention
of the college basketball world.
- The NCA in 1943wasn't the biggest tournament.
- The NCAA didn't havethat appeal, like the NIT.
The NIT was big, the biggestnational tournament there was.
- TheNational Invitation Tournament
brings the nation's top fiveto Madison Square Garden.
Teams meet in knock-down,drag-out fights to the finish.
- After we won the NCAA,
the New York papers were still
making a big issue over the fact that
we were just a small, countryschool, and been lucky.
- The night before theNCA Championship was played,
St. John's won the NationalInvitational Tournament.
- St. John's didn't just win the NIT,
they steamrolled teams.
This was a great team.
- I can still remember the team.
Boykoff, Gotkin, "Fuzzy" Levane,Baxster, and Al Moschetti.
- You had the NCA championand the NIT champion
in town at the same time.
Ned Irish, I am sure, was thinking,
"How do I get these teams together?"
- They'd never done that before.
They'd never had the NCAAand the NIT play off.
- Even then, with the imagination
that Wyoming had captured,
there was still this notion there,
"Well, that's nice", butnobody gave them a real chance.
- The basketball season's grand finale,
given greater significance tonight at Madison Square Garden,
and a killer-diller game it is.
What hangs on this ballgame
amounts to a national basketball crown.
- It was the Superbowl of college basketball.
That's what the Red Cross game was.
- They called it "the world'samateur championship".
- Both teams,
the kingpins of their respected moves.
St. John's rapid fire scoringhere in the past few minutes
has tied up the game.
From tip off to wind up, it's touch and go.
Wyoming scores.
Seconds later, St.John's Redmen retaliated.
Boykoff gave us a field goal.
- With a few seconds leftto go in regulation time,
St. John's tied the game,
and Kenny took anin-bounds pass, laid it in
for what appeared to be
the winning basket in regulation time.
But that became controversial,
because the referee said, "St.John's had called a timeout".
- I don't think theyhad a right to call a timeout.
How could you?
When you make a basket,
the ball actually belongsto the other team.
- Madison Square Garden was going crazy.
They said it was bedlam in there.
- The crowd was thinkin'just like I was thinkin',
"They can't do that".
- The game now in deadlock,
goes into five minutes overtime.
Slick, smart, and speedythese shifty sharpshooters.
A looping pass down court.
Moschetti, St. John's,takes a shot at the board,
and the Redmen score.
Never once tonight are these two quintets
more than four points apart.
A nip and tuck back from start to finish.
Five minutes overtime almost run out.
Three seconds left to play.
- This is the trophy
that they didn't expect to come to Wyoming.
It was supposed to stayin Madison Square Garden.
They had to ship it to us.
We couldn't bring it home.
- The final count 52 to 47,
and Wyoming's Cowboys are theundisputed kings of the court.
- It's pretty powerful, isn't it?
For a bunch of country kids from Wyoming.
None of us had been out of the state
before we went back to play.
- In 1943, a group of Cowboys
went into Madison Square Garden,
and won a national championship.
- They had carried our Cowboy banner,
and showed 'em who ate the cabbage,
as the old man use to say.
- It fueled a sense of Wyoming's identity.
It was in the blood and bone of Wyomingites.
Yeah, we too can compete with anybody.
- Little old Wyoming was
the best team in the country,
and nobody can ever say otherwise,
and Kenny was the head of the snake.
- I mean, that's a monumental task.
When you think about what Wyoming did in beating St. John's,
it would be like a DivisionII or Division III team
being able to navigate March Madness,
and win the national championship.
- There's no doubt,that for these guys to do that,
it was such a shining moment,
but this was a team that had no tomorrow,
because they were all goin' to war.
- We are mustering all our resources,
manhood, and industry, and wealth,
to make our nation strong in defense.
For recent history proves all too clearly,
I am sorry to say, that only the strong
may continue to live in freedom, and in peace.
- There was a war goin' on.
I knew they weren't gonnakeep me here in this country.
I was gonna be gone.
- His college career wasinterrupted by World War II.
- Two weeks later, thewhole team was on active duty.
- Kenny was one of the
best known basketball players in America.
AU All-American, CollegeAll-American, national champion.
He had everything going for him,
in terms of basketball stardom.
- I'm sure all those achievements
were exciting for him, butif you speak with Kenny
about his departure frombasketball, he'll tell you
he had more important things on his mind.
- Looking back at it,
if a guy is named the MVPof the tournament in 1943,
such a big deal, is it almost a shame
that you really didn't get to revel
- Yeah. - in excitement of that?
- Yeah, well, I was gone, you know?
In the Marines.
And basketball was important, and gosh,
we were proud of the fact we did what we did,
but I was thinkin' about leavin' my family,
and I was gonna be married,
and I was trying to convince her
we shouldn't get married before I,
until I come back from the Marine Corps,
'cause to be honest with ya,I didn't expect to come back.
Hell, that's the truth.
- Marilynne was pregnantwhen Kenny was shipped out.
In those days, widowsfrequently remained widows.
Out of loyalty to their marriage vows
they would never marry again.
But it was Marilynne who said,
"Nope, we're gonna get married", so they did.
She defied all the best advice, and said,
"I wanna marry you".
So that showed also how much she loved him.
Kenny was given command of 40Marines on this troop carrier.
- Our job was ship security,
and we had to go into the island sometimes,
and they'd have tent campsset up with the wounded,
and we'd have to go in andcarry 'em aboard this ship.
I had so many buddiesthat I'd lost in the war,
and in fact, if they didn'tget shot up or killed,
they had malaria.
- I think the Marines recognized
leadership skills in him from a very early time,
and when he was ready to muster out,
he was a Captain at that point.
- You joined the MarineCorp, and two years later,
the war is over with, and you're a Captain.
You've done a lot of things to get there.
- Once you've been a Marine,you're always a Marine,
and you respect the Marines,
because you know what it stands for, yeah.
- For Wyoming, at forward,
a 6'5 junior from San Antonio, Texas,
number 34, Fennis Dembo.
- I know when I'm in the presence of greatness.
They say that's Kenny Sailors.
I said, "Ah, I know who he is".
"I know what he represents."
What you're doin' as a kidthat's 18, 19-years-old,
you're readin' about allthese great people, right?
You were tryin' to be better than 'em.
- Saved his best game
for the most importantgame thus far of the year.
- How many basketballplayers we can think about
actually did something toforever change the game?
Forever?
- While I was in the PacificI never saw a basketball.
We never could get any news on it either.
We didn't get much of anything.
When I came back, why, theconference had a special ruling.
For us old boys who had been in the war
could come back and play, and we did.
- When Kenny came back to the states
at the end of the war,
it gave him a chance toreally work on the jump shot,
and really concentrate on itsflaws and its opportunities.
- It took years.
It didn't happen overnightto get my jump shot.
That didn't happen right away.
- The biggest technical problem
was the idea of jumping straight up.
- It took me longer todevelop that than anything,
'cause I'm dribblin' fast sometimes,
and you have to plant, and jump.
- So a lot of times, Ken would jump,
and he would drift into the player,
and he would be called for the foul.
- And they soon learned, you know,
to get that offense foul tostay put, and let him hit ya.
Coaches had me pegged all over the country,
so I had to develop a technique
where I actually stopped my forward motion,
and went straight up.
- In January, 1946, Kenny came back to
Madison Square Garden and played LIU,
and on that night, Kenny's jumpshot would become legendary.
- Oh God, almighty.
Wow!
He's up there.
- Well, first of all, he's really
gettin' off the ground. - Yeah.
- That's got some serious hops.
So not only was he jumping,
he was really getting off the floor,
so he must have really looked like a freak.
- Man, he up.
He was a white guy, man, gettin' up that high
off the floor on the jump shot?
Give me a break.
- Now, that's a piece of art right there.
It's beautiful.
- His off-hand is lightly on the ball,
elbow looks pointed straight at, you know,
that directs the shot.
- He's taken the ball straight up.
His eyes are focused, not onthe ball, but on a bucket.
- That is a perfect image of how I feel
every time I shoot a jump shot.
- I think there areeight guys in that picture,
and there are 14 feet on the ground,
and there are two feet off the ground,
but it's not a gimmick.
- The other defenders,they're kind of looking at,
like they're watching a different sport almost.
- The guy defendingKenny is in an athletic stance,
but it never occurred to him to jump.
- That show you how groundedthe game was at that time,
and where he was takin' it.
To flight.
- Think of the defender,a guy jumps up in the air.
- That's pretty cool.
A visionary, man.
Way ahead of his time.
- I've never seen this photo before,
but it's absolutely phenomenal.
Every kid should see this.
- I was expecting it to be somewhat different.
Like, sure it was a jump shotof its time, but it's evolved.
It hasn't evolved.
Kenny nailed it in the '40s.
- I mean, it really looks likea Russel Westbrook photo now,
the way he elevates, andstops on a dime on the break.
I mean, that's amazing.
- That is as good a form
as I've ever seen with the jump shot.
I mean, that is an unbelievable picture.
I want a copy of it.
- I'm a Millennial, so I just thought
the jump shot just appeared.
It was just a part of the game.
It's important, 'cause I knowthe work that goes into this.
It's hard to make it tothe top of your profession,
or to the top of anything.
Pioneers, they don'tusually get a lot of credit,
because not a lot of people tend to go back,
and go through the journey ofbasketball when they should.
And I think stories like this
is gonna have people startin' to
just puttin' the pieces together.
That shot is what the game is centered around.
You know, it's around the jump shot,
and I just want people to know, man,
where this stuff comes from,
'cause it's not the guys yousee on the NBA court right now.
We didn't create this stuff.
If you love the game so much,
you will wanna see where it comes from,
and where it's goin', and Kenny is a guy
that stuck that flag in the ground,
and let it be known that thisgame is gonna be here forever,
and I can't thank him enough for that.
- My old shoulders,
boy, I couldn't shoot a three-point shot for
love or money.
Mostly, it was my speed andmy quickness with the dribble
is what got me by my man, I guess.
I dribbled up to him, like this,
and then I give the ball this here.
I can't keep a balance even.
I give the ball this kind of a motion.
He gets a rockin', and he'sdown here rockin' with me,
I jump, I jump and shoot the ball.
It's evidently a pretty good shot.
There's a lot of guys shootin' it today.
I oughta sue the NBA
for usin' my shot without megettin' anything out of it.
Shouldn't they?
If I good lawyer, I'd do that.
Sue 'em all for 5,000.
I could make a little money, could I?
Yeah.
Gosh, I was nearly 27-years-oldwhen I went into the NBA.
You know, these kids are goin'in today when they're 19.
You know, they make millions.
I didn't make nothing.
Man, they really paid me.
I made 75 hundred dollars for the season.
That was big money in those days.
The NBA started up in 1946.
- The NBA was in its infancy then.
There were eight teams in the NBA.
- This game has nothad that long of a history.
- Pro-basketball, at the time,
was hardly in the public conscience at all.
Baseball, football, boxing dominated.
They were a lot bigger than basketball.
- The pros didn't have much oomph behind 'em,
because it was smallcities against big cities,
and there was littleemotional rooting interest.
- Honestly, I coached a high school game
in Madison Square Garden,
and we had more people than the the pros.
- These franchises would go for a while,
and they'd fold like a card table.
- There's a handful of teams
with a handful of players,
and there's a complete randomness
to whether you're in a goodsituation, or a bad situation.
In Kenny's case, he reallywas in several bad situations.
- Kenny was moved around quite a bit,
and it wasn't because he was a poor player.
It was because at least three of those teams,
I can think of, collapsed financially.
They went out of business.
They were disbanded.
Players were thrown into a lottery,
and picked by other teams.
- Not knowin' where you're gonna live,
not knowin' when thepaycheck was gonna come in,
just changin' scenery over,and over, and over again,
yeah, that'd be tough, man.
- It's hard to imagine the barriers
these guys had to get through
just so people could see them play.
- It's just crazy to think about it.
I'm definitely blessed to beplayin' the game right now,
but you have a huge amount of respect
for the people that have propelled the game
to make it what it is.
- We get on planes,
and play on ESPN and TNT like it's nothin',
but these guys, like theypaved the way for us.
- Every major bit of progress
in the history of most sports
is going to be looked at as threatening.
If you look at George Mikan,Bob Pettit, Bill Russell,
Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
rules were made to slow them down.
There was this fear that they were gonna
take over the game, and skewthe competitive advantage,
and there's no doubt thatthe jump shot fits into that.
- Jimmy Breslin, the famous, you know,
Pulitzer Prize winning columnist,
he was just a sports writer back then,
and he wrote this long column
on how the jump shot had ruined basketball,
because you have one guywho can just take the ball,
either shoot right away off the pass,
or take a couple dribbles,
and just take his guy, and rise up.
- Old school coaches, firstof all, didn't believe in it,
and then once people started to have success,
the idea that this is not basketball.
- This first coach I had,"Dutch" Dehnert was his name,
he had the coaching job there at Cleveland
my first year in the NBA.
A couple days before the season got underway,
I was shootin' jump shotsoff of my buddy there.
Dutch came up.
He said to me, "Sailors", he said,
"Where'd you get that leap and one-hander?"
I said, "I don't know, Dutch".
I said, "I had that quite a while".
I said, "That's what keeps me in the game".
"You just never go in thisleague with a shot like that."
He meant it.
I didn't play much to start with at all.
He says, "I'll show you how to shoot
a good two-handed set shot",and he says, "That dribble",
he says, "We don't dribble in this league".
He says, "We pass the ball up the court".
And I said, "Well, now that you take
my jump shot and my dribble away,
you might as well sell me, get rid of me".
"I aint gonna help you any."
- You know what your strengths are.
You know what you do well.
You know who you are as a basketball player,
and somebody's telling youyou can't do those things,
if I walked into practice,and my coach told me
I couldn't shoot a three,
or I couldn't shoot from this spot on the floor,
I don't know if I would be in the league,
that's for sure.
- This is the way they did it in those days.
They sent Dutch on the road scoutin'.
You know, I don't know whatold Dutch could scout for,
but when we started to do much better,
the general manager, hestarted me right off the bat,
and I was the point guard.
I brought the ball up.
I dribbled it up.
I didn't pass it to anybody.
And he said the same thingmy old college coach said,
"Give the ball to Sailors,and get away from him".
"Get up court."
- People knew thatKenny was the ball player,
and I think he brought in a lot of crowds too.
- If you look at hisstatistics, his points per game,
and the number of times he ranked in
the top 10 in various categories,
he had a verydistinguished pro career,
but he never played for a winning team.
- What gets lost sometimes,
is when people are so brilliant
at something like a jump shot,
they're overshadowed by their own greatness,
and I didn't know that Kenny was
such a brilliant ball handler.
- My dribble, I used it realeffectively in my scoring.
By just dribbling up to a man,
and just usin' a change of pace, and then boo,
take off just like that.
- Okay, Kenny, break 'em down, then.
With a crossover.
Impressive.
Especially watching histeammates shoot afterwards,
and they're just standin' there.
- I don't know who invented the floater,
but Kenny's got it down too.
- Big thing the jump shot did for me,
is it give me that opportunityto drive to the basket.
- If everybody collapsed,he could pass it.
If everybody stayed, hecould just rise up and shoot.
- You go back and readsome of these old articles,
and you read about his wizardry as a passer,
he was the most adroit dribblerin the basketball annals.
You hear all the, you know,the stately talk of the day.
- I'd shake the ball, like this.
I can't do it anymore.
But I'd do it real fastthis way, and then that way,
and he'd usually go thatway, and I'd go this way.
- That's a move that stillworks today, actually.
- A little Curry flurry.
- Yeah, I call it the windshield wiper
with one hand, right there.
- But it's just a matter of shakin' the ball.
- They didn't know what to do with that.
- If you talk to Kenny,
he's more proud of being a good defender
than he is about his jump shot.
- My trick in playingdefense was to get down low.
If you put your head,
you'd hit his bellybuttonright here on your forehead.
That's the way you play defense, down in here.
The faster the man is, and you know
the more room you have to give him.
If he's not quick andfast, get right up in here.
- I bet he was movin', and drivin' it,
shootin' off the dribble.
In some ways, he wasplayin' a different game.
- As soon as he touched the ball,
your eyes gravitate tojust how different it looks
when he's dribblin' the ball,
and his creativity on the floor,
which I hope that that's how people
see me when I'm out there.
- So he doesn'treally take credit for it.
He really doesn't it.
- Well, who would know who's the first kid
- Well--- that jumped in the air,
and shot a basketball?
- Just take it, and run with it.
- It's the only thing I've done in my life
that people are interested in.
They don't know that that--- You're still doin' it,
and you're not even playin'.
You're still goin'. - Most of 'em
don't even know that I'vebeen in the guidin' outfitin',
for over 50 years. - Yeah.
- 50 years. - Was it over 50?
- Right. - I thought it was 30?
- 35 in Alaska. - Wow.
- Or that I was a coach, a high school coach.
A lot of thing I've done
that's probably more importantthan that stupid jump shot.
As I've gotten older, the Lord has shown me
that there's far more things more important
than just sports or basketball.
When I married my wife, the doctors told me
that I'd be fortunate if she lived to be 50.
She had to go to the doctor pretty regular
with that asthma and emphysema.
And I said, "Doc, what kindof a lifestyle can we live
that will prolong her life?", and he said,
"If you can stay out into the country,
and stay out of the cities,
it would be really beneficial to her".
That's why when I gotretirement, pfft, I'm gone.
- Kenny left basketball.
He could've gotten into broadcasting,
maybe doing a column in the paper,
but he wasn't looking for honors in a sense.
It was his way of life.
He wanted to play pro-basketball
long enough to get a pension, and then quit,
and go out in the sticks.
- Alaska was a place that held a fascination
for my wife and I clearback before we were married.
Bigger mountains, biggerrivers, bigger everything.
Marilynne and I loved that experience
of experimenting with the unknown.
We lived 20 miles out of just a small town,
15 hundred people, at the footof the Wrangell Mountains,
and we lived up there 35 years.
Up to the
- We didn't have
to buy anything, just go out over the country,
wherever it looks nice, and homestead.
Set your corners up, and live on it for a year,
and it's yours.
- Kenny was an outdoors manwho like to hunt, and fish,
and be in the mountains, and ride horses.
To this day, he has some spurs and cowboy hats
that must be 100 years old.
- These chaps are a part ofthe business I grew up in.
Cowboy's hat.
This is not quite as oldas me, but it's pretty old.
Most cowboys are pretty proud of their hats.
- I've told him this.
I said, "You know, Kenny, youcould've been born in 1821,
and been a man on the Western Frontier,
leading wagon trains on the Oregon Trail,
because you would never have turned back".
- We got into
the big game hunting,
which ended up being one of our major business.
- It was really great workin' with Kenny.
We had a really goodrelationship from the start.
We did mostly sheep huntin',and then some moose hunts.
Moose, they're so darn big,the way Kenny operated,
he'd put 'em on the horse's backs,
and he could pack 'em a lot further than we can.
- We had to drive over 100miles to the end of a road
with the horses, and thenride into the mountains
to get to the hunting camp.
Being in the mountains is amazing.
That's one of my favorite things.
But riding horses for 12 hours in the mountains,
not so much when you're likeeight or nine-years-old.
- Word got around pretty fast
that he'd been in the NBA.
I don't think he bragged about it,
but it was somethin' that came up.
- We were in awe,
because he had played with the Boston Celtics.
- We just couldn't believe
that somebody thattalented and accomplished
could come to this little, podunk place
in the middle of nowhere.
- Hunting season started in August,
so by October, I'm all through,
and it worked out perfect for me
coachin' and teachin' in the schools.
- Kenny was my basketballcoach, my track coach,
my football coach, my wresting coach.
He pretty much filled the coaching spot
for everything we had.
- Before Kenny arrived, there was no
scholastic basketballparticipation for the girls.
It was just PE classes,
and possibly intermural scrimmages.
- There was no girls basketball.
I didn't like that, because I had a daughter
that was a good athlete,and I thought it was wrong
for it not to have a girls program.
- At that time, the girls couldn't
cross over the half line,
except for the rovingguards, and roaming forwards.
- And it was the old Iowagame they use to call it,
the half-court game.
They played six people to a team,
and only three of them could cross half-court.
- The reason women played six on six
is because they didn'twant us to get exhausted.
- Girls wereconsidered to be so frail
they couldn't run up and down the court.
- They thought if we could just run
half-court here and a half-court there
it wouldn't be too physically taxing on us.
It's crazy.
- He grew up with a really strong woman,
so in his mind, women are tough,
so why can't they run up and down the court?
- So I worked to get girls basketball goin',
and I use to travel aroundwith one of the gals,
and we'd go hold clinics all over the state,
and try to convince 'em
that they needed a girlsprogram in their schools,
Just as important as it is for boys.
- Up to that point,organized girls basketball
was played just in the private school system,
and he was instrumental in getting
that state tournament started.
And by 1970, there were teams all over Alaska
playing in the girls basketball tournament,
and his team was in the thick of things.
- He put Glennallen on the map.
- He had somehellacious good girls teams.
- Anybody who had a team,
and was willing to play us, we would play.
- The other thing that Kenny did,
he gave Native girls achance to play basketball.
- The first team I coachedthere in Glennallen,
I think they were all Athabascans or Eskimos,
all the girls, except two or three.
- They were generallydeemed too little to play.
They weren't as tall instature as the white girls,
the Anglo girls, if you will.
But that was okay with Kenny,because he could teach them.
- He taught us by demonstration.
We'd see how he did it, and we'd copy,
and them, you know, whoa, we can do things
we never dreamed we'd be able to do.
- Believe it or not, Itaught 'em the same offense
that I played in college.
My old college coach says,
"You guys that are gonna coachin high school", he said,
"Don't try to teach this to high school kids".
"It'll take 'em, they'd be seniors
before they could ever learn how to do it."
It didn't my girls that long.
They picked it up in a hurry.
- He was very proud of 'em,
because they did what he taught 'em to do,
and that was, forget about being ladies
when you're on the basketball court.
Once they overcame that, he had a winnin' team.
- That's huge for women.
That's huge, especially when you were told
you're not supposed to be aggressive,
or you're not supposed to sweat,
or you're not supposed to be
out there playin', bein' physical.
- I'll brag a little here now.
My girls won three state championships,
and we came in second oncein a seven year period.
- They won 68 straight games,
and became a powerhouse, this little Glennallen.
- He organizedbasketball, and made it big
in the state of Alaska.
- He just constantly used the sport
to influence people's lives.
- I don't think there's alife that he didn't touch
up in the Glennallen area.
- I was really a lousy basketball player,
but he encouraged me to play.
- He gave us purpose,passion, personal confidence
to become a lot of different things
that would never have happened otherwise.
- I think he saw something in me
that he wanted to develop.
- That was a big part for him.
It's not necessarily winning championships,
but developing kids who would have the mentality
to take what they learned,
and apply it to other areas of their life.
- In order for him to go empower them to say,
"Look, this game right here is amazing".
"It builds team work, character, chemistry."
"It builds all that stuff thatyou need in the real world,
and empower women at the same time."
I mean, that's all you're really want man.
- He's the best thing
that could've happened to Glennallen.
- For 35 years, Kenny lived in Alaska,
and at least half of that time
was spent teaching and coachingat the high school level.
He retired at age 70.
And throughout all the, youknow, his exciting adventures,
Grandma stayed by his side.
- That's my girl.
60 years of my life I spent with that girl.
My wife and I had a wonderful marriage,
and it lasted a long time.
We've enjoyed livin' with each other.
We enjoyed our family.
I don't know how itcould've been any better.
She contacted dementia,
and gradually you lose yourmemory of things way back.
One time at night, woke up in the winter time,
and I looked over, and she wasn't in bed.
So I went and looked in the bathroom,
and out in the kitchenwhere sometimes she gets up,
and goes and gets a cup of coffee,
and then, no sign of her.
So I went outside,
and I went around thecorner of our lodge there,
and there she stood.
The northern lights, oh, they were beautiful,
right down around her, andme, and everybody else.
It was about 30 degrees below outside,
and she was just standin' therewith her night clothes on,
and she did have hercloak on, thank goodness.
When I told the doctors aboutit, that's when they said,
"Kenny, you better begin thinkin' about
gettin' out of this climate,
because you'll walk out one of these nights
when it's 40 or 50 below, andshe won't last very long".
- I think she realized
that she needed to stay healthy for him
'cause they were a team.
A lot of decisions that he made in his life
were because he wanted to be there for her,
and, you know, as she got sicker,
just being there as much ashe possibly could for Grandma
until she was gone, so.
- It's tough, but the Lord gives you strength
that you don't even know where it comes from.
He just gives you the strength
to go through most anything, mm-hmm.
- He doesn't understand why
he's still gettin' around, and stuff,
other than the Lord has things for him to do.
- When you think in terms of Kenny
essentially dropping out ofthe basketball world in 1951,
and coming back almost in the 21st century,
it's almost like these peoplewho will wake out of a coma,
and have to learn how to usea computer, and a cellphone.
That one-hand modern day jumpshot has changed the game,
that which maybe a computerhas changed our generation.
- You could almostgo decade by decade,
and the game is almost unrecognizable
to the previous decade.
That being said,
there are elements that give it some continuity.
The jump shot certainly contributed to that.
- It's a whole different game
than Dr. Naismith originallyenvisioned in his mind.
- The interesting thing about basketball
is it's always evolving.
All the greats of the game can do thing today
that nobody ever thought that players could do.
- With thethree-point lines moving to
a perimeter oriented game,
and whether people know it or not,
you can anywhere in the world,
and watch people play basketball,
and they're shooting Kenny's shot.
- I'm gettinga little excited right now.
In Laramie they may be dancing in the streets.
- In 1987, our basketball team
beat a highly rated UCLA team
to advance to the Sweet 16.
- Wyoming delivered.
- A couple years ago, theuniversity put a team into the
Wyoming Sports Hall of Fame.
One morning I came down for breakfast,
and I saw Kenny Sailors there,
so I sat down and ate breakfast with him,
and to my shock, I find outthat he wasn't recognized
in the Naismith Hall of Fame.
I just thought he was in,
and then when I found out he wasn't,
from that moment on, Ijust kinda made up my mind
that I'm going to put every effort I can
into seein' if we can't getKenny put into the Hall of Fame,
because he belongs there.
I mean, this is a righteous project.
- The Naismith MemorialBasketball Hall of Fame
is one of the more confusedinstitutions of its stature.
- They operate a little differently.
They are not like the standard Hall of Fame.
- When it comes timeto vote for Cooperstown
every media outlet in the country
is discussing who belongs in and why,
and everybody knows the rules.
75% of the vote from active members
of the Baseball Writers' Association of America
gets you into Cooperstown,
and that vote is gonna bepublished in the morning,
and many guys reveal their vote.
- With the Naismith Hall of Fame
it's a secret process with a secret committee.
- Nobody's quite surehow you do or don't get in
to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame.
- There are people who say that,
"Kenny Sailors is the best basketball player
they ever saw play".
If you ever need a bigger testament
that this was one of thegreat basketball players ever,
at the 1990 Final Four in Denver,
they recognized the players of the decade
for the first 50 years of NCAA Tournament.
For the 1980s, PatrickEwing, '70's, Magic Johnson,
'60s, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,'50s, Bill Russell.
Kenny got it for the 1940s.
Not bad company.
- I know it's a hard job to induct people
into the Hall of Fame, and the criteria,
you know, you've gotta lookat so many different things.
I understand that,
but if you really want to do your job right,
you would do your homework,
you would do your research,
and you would realize that he belongs.
- I am confident in saying,
"There is no largeromission from a major sport
Hall of Fame than Kenny Sailors".
The only thing you can tell me
about why Kenny Sailorsshouldn't be in the Hall of Fame
is because Kenny Sailors is not famous.
- Were you sayin',
talkin' about once you had some endorsements,
but the club got the money?
- And what were you selling?
- Prune juice, huh?
That's supposed to be for digestion?
- Oh, prune juice.
That was the Gatorade backin the day, prune juice?
Ew.
- "Nature's great energy builder."
I gotta try that, actually.
- That's pretty good.
He's got a good smile.
He's repin' it, I like that.
- You know, I'm almost 40, at this point,
I'll try anything, so I might have them give me
the Bennetts Prune Juice.
- I don't know if you cando that nowadays, but hey,
if it weren't for prune juice,
there probably wouldn't have been a Gatorade.
- Yeah, we've talked about this a lot,
and others have contributed ideas
as to why Kenny's not in the Hall of Fame.
It's a whole series of events, I think,
but essentially, that he disappeared for so long.
- It is as simple asout of sight, out of mind.
Kenny went away, and all of a sudden,
his name became,"Remember Kenny Sailors?"
- The trail got lost
after he'd spent anotherlife time in another world.
- And, of course, the question of
who invented the modern jump shot
seemed to be almost irrelevant,
because everybody thoughtthat it's always existed,
so who cares?
- Every time we did talk about it,
there were those that said,
"Well, he didn't invent it".
"These guys invented it."
- I mean, Luisetti.
- To a lot of people,
the jump shot wascredited to Hank Luisetti.
- I called Hank Luisetti.
He said, "I didn't have a jump shot".
"I had a running one-hander."
- There's a debate over
the inventor of the jump shot,
because you have so many definitions of it.
- When you start talking aboutthis, everybody's got a name.
- John Miller Cooper.
- So the story with John Cooperwas that he was in the post,
and someone threw him a pass
that he kinda had to jump up to get,
and he just turned at thesame time, and shot it.
- You know, you talk aboutguys like Belus Smawley.
- I've covered Belus, so I know.
He was a two-handed shot off this way,
kinda off to the side.
- It's one of those things,
that it's like ingrainedin our basketball culture,
your jump shot is like your hand print.
- Even Joe Fulks, whowas a teammate of Kenny's,
had an unusual shot.
- A real pro-veteran,
"Jumpin' Joe Fulks". - It was over his head,
the ball was up here, bothhands, he'd get a little height.
And boy, oh boy, how he could shoot that thing.
- There might be 100 guys outthere that shot a jump shot
if you wanna count leavin' the floor,
and throwin' the ball towardthe bucket a jump shot.
- The Hall of Fame recognized Glenn Roberts
as the founder of the jump shot,
and they found him on very sparse evidence.
- Who knows for sure, buthe was a guy in the '30s,
you know, had the shot,and put up great numbers.
- Clearly, Glenn Roberts
had a shot that was different
that involved leaving the ground.
- But again, is it definitive?
No.
- People can legitimatelycontest a jump shot,
but not "the jump shot".
- The real thing that separatesKenny from everyone else,
if you're talking about a jump shot,
is Kenny gave it its coming out party.
- Kids in their community
started tryin' to imitate that shot
as soon as they saw it in "Life Magazine".
I had people tell me, even ballplayers tell me
that that's the first pictureI ever saw of a jump shot.
- We've talked about what it meant to be
on the main stage of MadisonSquare Garden in 1943.
"Life Magazine" was every bitas impactful, if not more.
- So here's this "Life Magazine" picture,
read by and looked at by kids like me
all over the country, saying,"What is happening here?"
- "Life Magazine" was such a dominant
publication at the time that, you know,
millions of people see this shot,
and they realize thatsomeone has done something
that they don't normally see.
- Today, guys aretrained to go straight up,
but there was nobodytelling him how to do it,
because nobody had done it.
- Kids saw it, and thenthey went and tried to do it.
- Well, I used myjump shot everywhere I went.
In fact, when I played with Providence,
they required me to goaround to the high school,
and hold clinics on how toshoot the jump shot, yeah.
I kinda enjoyed that, so.
- You could use it as anargument to prove time travel.
I mean, it looks like thisguy from last night's NBA game
was plopped down into the era
of black leather shoes and tight shorts.
This was the shot that changed the game,
but nobody realized, when he came down
the world was gonna be different.
- Here, let me clean you off here.
- I got it.
Keep it just like it is in the front, Larry.
- It's just amazing to me
that with all the evidence we've piled up
in the last 10 years, you know,
and he still denies culpability.
- And who knows, back in the 1800s,
some kid out in PodunkHigh could jump in the air,
and throw the ball, couldn't he?
It's a jump shot if his feet leaves the floor.
- He's not the type of individual
who's going to speak against
the accomplishments of other people.
When I spoke to Kenny,he was careful to confine
absolutes to what he knew.
- Kenny won't tellyou that he's the first.
You know, he's too humble for that.
- But he's happy to tell ya
that this is what otherplayers in my era thought.
- Ray Meyer from DePaul, hesaid it the best, I think.
"Sailors may not have been the first player
to jump in the air, and shoot the ball,
but he developed the shotthat's being used today."
- In case he hasn't seen it,
I'm gonna bring him a copyof the nomination packet
for the Naismith Hall ofFame, and he may have seen it.
I'm not sure, but I'm just bringing one along.
The nomination packet we have for Kenny Sailors
is a knock your socks off package.
- Come in, Jim!
- Where's my buddy?
There he is.
- How you doin'?
- Kenny was fortunate when he came back
that there were somepeople in his inner circle
who cared about his legacy.
- Have you seen the packetfor the Hall of Fame?
Have you seen one of those?- No,
I haven't seen it.
"Developer of the modern jump shot."
Yeah, that's pretty accurate.
That looks like the-- - This is Utah State
in Hells Half Acre.
Now, there's your "Life Magazine" shot.
- Yeah.
And that crazy jump shot,
it's really got me into trouble.
It's bigger than Ithought it would ever be.
I never give a thought backwhen I was first developin' it
that it would develop intosomethin' like it is today.
- The sport of basketball'sseen many names
shape its rich history,
but there's one name that escapes memory.
- Not only is Kenny Sailors
one of the great players of all time,
he's the guy who first thought of the idea
of shooting a jump shot.
- As aplayer/pioneer/contributor,Sailors has few equals.
- For where would basketballbe without Kenny Sailors,
and what is known today as the jump shot?
- We've had CBS comeout, and do a feature on him.
- The University ofWyoming has done a tremendous
service to unearth thisstory in the last 10 years.
- It's not about Kenny, to him,
but he does it to raise the bar
for the University of Wyoming,
and raise the bar for his teammates.
- The "New York Daily News"
did a feature on him last year.
- Kenny Sailors is not just a Wyoming treasure,
but he's a treasure for the game.
- He led Wyoming to the 1943 NCAA Championships.
They did beat Georgetown.
Patrick did not play in that game.
He's not quite that old.
- Sailors belongs in theNaismith Memorial Hall of Fame.
I mean, you've got the guy
who invented the 24-secondshot clock in the Hall of Fame.
You can't get the guy whoinvented the jump shot
in the Hall of Fame?
- He was involved in an ESPN special,
narrating for the 75thanniversary of the Final Four.
- Who better a person to narrate a story
about the history of the NCA Tournament
than the man who invented the jump shot?
- Please give a round of applause
for Kenny Sailors.
- You know, since I've been here,
I've been asked by quite a few people,
you know, if I'm happy to be here.
And, you know, at 92-years of age
you're happy to be anywhere.
- I always marveledat how he'd come up here,
he's 92-years-old, and he'd walk the arena
as if he was a, I don'tknow, 60 or 70-year-old guy.
- Kenny's always in the outdoors,
and he's always playin' basketball,
and he always stayed in shape.
- And he could go out and shoot
left-handed, right-handed on a court,
put up layups, little hook shots.
- He was dribblin' thebasketball between his legs.
For God sake, I can't even find my leg.
- He can yo-yo up and down crosswise,
and he could still do all this stuff today.
You won't see many 90-plus-year-olds being able to do that.
- That was my jump shot.
- You take away all the business, all the media,
all the hype around the game,
and you wanna see purelove, look at Kenny Sailors.
- Kenny is still around, andeverybody sees him at games.
People like to be around him.
Children, they wanna get his autograph.
- Was goin' to Wyomingpractices at 80-years-old,
like, I know I probably,
if I've been playin' the game for that long,
I'm not going to a random practice
on a Tuesday and Wednesdayjust to check it out.
That's just love for the game.
- I practiced a littlebit, .
- Ready? - Ready.
- You'd look at him and say,
"I think Kenny Sailors could go on",
who's know how long hecould go on, in the 100s.
- I know I'm an old man,
and I know I can't dotoday what I did when I was
even in my 70s, even come close to it.
Yeah, I was still guidin'some when I was in my 70s.
Yeah, and I could climb that mountain
after that white sheep, and stuff,
but that was still, you know,
I shouldn't have been, probably,
because it is dangerous.
And I can still talk withpeople pretty well, so.
And I can still do the thingsthat someone my age can do.
It's the physical things that I can't do, yeah,
and I don't even wanna try.
I wanna stay as healthy as I can
up until the time I get out of here.
I don't wanna have to go into a nursing home,
or spend a long time in the hospital,
or somethin', you know?
I don't want people to have the trouble
of tryin' to take care of me when I get older.
There's the whole thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay, I got her.
- Well, Kenny'sslowed down a little bit,
and remarkably so, will tell you.
He doesn't like getting out quite as much
just 'cause it's harderfor him to stand and walk
for extended periods of time.
- What's amazing for a man who's been so proud
of what he could do for so long on his own,
he's accepted these thingswith a lot of grace,
and that's not easy.
- Well, hi, Betty.
- He focuses on the positive,
and I think that's why he's the person he is,
and the person he hasbeen for quite some time.
- Sat over here.
- He still feels like he has a purpose,
that's what keeps him goin',and makes him most fulfilled.
- I tried to get him to
pay attention to me. - There you go.
- You never did.
- She's lyin'.
You know, it was just the other way around.
- Yeah, ha.- She wouldn't look at me.
- Ha ha ha. - Yeah, she wouldn't
have anything to do with me.- Yeah.
- Here, I thought you were thegreatest girl in high school.
- Oh, baloney.
- Kenny's always had a good sense of humor.
He is not too proud toaccept kidding about himself.
- Be careful with that hat.
I mean, I don't want you to get it dirty.
- I don't wanna geta disease from this hat.
That's a stinky, smelly, old hat
- Oh, come on, Bill. - that should be
probably buried outside with a skunk.
- Ha, yeah, that hat's got a lot of prestige,
and I'll tell ya,
well, you can tell by lookin' at it.
- Well, it looks like alot of interesting things
have happened to this hat, probably a lot
more than sweat. - Well, the horse
drank water out of it, and ate oats out of it,
and we did all sorts of things with that hat.
- What else did you-- - I drank out of it.
But you can tell by lookin'at it, it's had a few years.
- So can I put this on your head
just to see what it looks like today?
I think it's good for him,and for me, to test his wit.
Keeps him sharp.
He's gotta have comebacks,and he can dish it right back.
- I treat this hat with a lot of respect, Bill.
- It doesn't deserve any.
- Anytime Kenny's in the building,
I wanna make sure heunderstands the love's there.
- Hi, Coach.
Excuse me for not gettin' up.
- You don't have to get up.
I'm supposed to get up for the old man.
You're not supposed toget up for the young man.
- Okay.
- How you doin'?
- He wanders our halls.
He comes to our games.
He hugs our kids when we lose.
He hugs our kids when we win.
We're fortunate that he'sbeen part of our experience.
- Three-up, guys.
- Sometimes what you give getsthrown back to you tenfold,
and that's the dream, I think,
all of us have for Kenny Sailors.
- You bet.
- He's already put his name
amongst the greatest college players,
he and the College Basketball Hall of Fame,
but it would be great for him to be
in the Naismith Hall of Fame,
and have his name with all those great
college and professional players.
- Everyone who knows his story
would love to see this happen for him
when he can appreciate it, when he can live it,
when he can know that he went down
with the greatest basketball players ever,
and he'll be there forever.
He deserves to know that.
- The sooner the election, the better.
- It's a borrowed time situation.
It would be great right now.
- Please welcome your host
for the NBA All-Star
Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame announcement--
- It is a big day.
A lot of people have worked a lot.
- Yeah, you know, this weekend,
hopefully we'll get some good news.
- It's so exciting justthinking about if it happens.
- I think Kenny's probablyhandelin' it the best.
But for those of us who really would like
to see him get this honor,
we're probably a little more anxious than he is.
- Good morning, everybody,
and thank you for joining us here.
A very special welcome to
all of our friendswatching around the world
on NBA-- - Well, that's the
million dollar question, "Does he have a chance?"
- Truthfully, I think they're about 50/50.
It should be 100%.
- We need to get to now the introduction
of the first members of theHall of Fame class of 2015.
- Oh, shit.
I'm so down in some ways,
and then I'm so pissed off in other ways.
And to me, it goes back to the two basic areas.
One, it happened so long ago it's not relevant.
And then the second part of it is,
we just haven't reallyproved our case well enough.
I need to sit down, and think about this,
and I think all of us do.
But from winning you get some feedback,
and from losing you get some feedback,
and I think that we get all our ducks in a row,
and then we bang 'em early for next year.
Please believe me, this aint finished.
- When Kenny Sailors getsinto the Hall of Fame
it will, unfortunately, be a ripple.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
It will, however,
complete the Naismith MemorialBasketball Hall of Fame,
because right now it's incomplete,
and it can't be complete without Kenny.
- The evidence is there.
It's been there.
You're hopin' that over time,
maybe the next year somehow,they see it differently
than they saw it a year before.
But I just don't think peopleare gonna appreciate something
that happened, in their eyes, so long ago.
- His name, his accolades,it's just his whole legacy
should be in the Hall of Fame,
and his family deserves that as well.
We're gonna keep fightinguntil we get him in there.
- The game is built onwhat the pioneers have done
in every era, and we owe 'em a lot,
because that's the foundation of the game,
and you see trial and error,
you see innovation atthat time, and new things,
like Kenny Sailors and the jump shot.
- His story has to be told.
Now that I know, I'm gonnatake it to the Hall of Fame.
I'm gonna share this storywith other athletes and people
so they know the origin of where this started.
- All of us that have everplayed or coached the game
should have a picture of KennySailors' ass up somewhere
that we can kiss every timewe go into the locker room.
- I want Sailors' family just to know
that we appreciate him.
We appreciate what he did for the game.
We appreciate just the level of teaching
that he brought after hefinished playing the game.
It's just something I've never seen before.
Just to love and care forother people, and for the game,
that's just an amazing man right there.
- I don't think to this day Kenny is interested
in his legacy as a jump shooter.
He doesn't care that he'sthe first jump shooter.
He doesn't even wanna talk about that.
He's interested in talkingabout what he had to do
to be the best version of himself.
- There's only one number retired
at the University of Wyoming,and that's number four.
If you've got a legacy in that size,
you've got a high ladder toclimb to reach Kenny Sailors.
- This is probably the quote
that summed Kenny up the best for me I said,
"Do you wanna go into the Hall of Fame?"
He says, "Oh, sure I wannago into the Hall of Fame".
"It'd mean a great deal to me."
"Basketball's done a lot for me."
I told Jim Brandenburg that,and he laughed and said,
"Kenny's got that backwards".
"Nobody's ever done morefor basketball than Kenny."
- I guess, from a world standpoint,
they'd probably say, "I had acalling to play basketball".
Since it's worked out, basketball's given me an opportunity
to speak to people thatprobably wouldn't have even
spoke to me if I hadn't been a good ball player.
And the Lord uses these thingsin the lives of individuals.
My case, it was sports, and the jump shot.
Yeah, I'm not in the Hall of Fame.
So far, I've never made it.
If I were to make the Hall of Fame today,
oh, you know, it'd be nice.
I mean, I'm a human beingjust like everybody else.
But I know I belong tothe greatest Hall of Fame
that any man or woman can ever belong to,
and when you belong to that,and you know you belong to it,
you don't worry about these Halls of Fames
that men create down here.
Don't mean that much to you.
- Wyoming's Kenny Sailors,
who had just turned95-years-of-age two weeks ago,
passed away in his sleepthis morning at 2:50 a.m.
Here in Laramie, Wyoming.
I'll just say this, there's no bigger fan,
or a fellow that lovedCowboy and Cowgirl basketball
as much as Kenny Sailors.
- I remember one time we werewatchin' the NCAA Tournament,
and I asked Kenny about hisFinal Four, and he said,
"Well, my Final Four would be God, husband,
father, and US Marine in that order".
I noticed that basketballwas not on the list,
and he said, "Yeah".
He said, "Those are the mostimportant things to me".
"Those are my Final Four."
- When we think about UW athletes,
it's not just what they do onthe court, or on the field,
it's how they represent the university,
how they represent the state of Wyoming
that gives us such pride in what they do.
Today, we recognize one veryspecial athlete, Kenny Sailors.
- Well, a statue wasunveiled of my grandfather.
The first thing I thoughtwas, "That is so huge".
- It's a great replica ofhis shot in all the detail.
It brings him back to life just a little bit.
- Kenny Sailors, as you look at this statue,
it's larger than life, which is appropriate,
because he certainly was that way.
- I think of all the things we've done here,
I'm most proud of this because of that man.
I don't know if you can ever tribute him enough,
but this is about as good as we could do.
- It's almost surreal.
It makes me feel reallyproud that I'm a Sailors.
- It's appropriate we celebrate somebody
that has meant so much tothis state, to the game,
and not just when he was playing,
but he always gave back to the community.
A great UW Cowboy.
- I know he'd be embarrassed,and he'd be mad at us,
but we're very proud thatit turned out as it did.