A jump shot is better than a layup, Part 3

Several weeks ago, we posed a provocative proposition – a jump shot is better than a layup – and set out to prove it. In Part 1, we traced the historic evolution of basketball and how coaching philosophy and strategy differed from one region to the next, but finally collided in the 1930s and 40s when Stanford’s Hank Luisetti and Wyoming’s Kenny Sailors dazzled the country with their one-handed jump shooting. In Part 2, we explored the nature of jump shooting and its dramatic impact on basketball. Now, in this final post on the subject, we’ll offer three proofs for our proposition.

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It’s a Simple Game

In The Physics of Baseball, Yale professor Robert Adair describes the difficulty of hitting a baseball hurdling toward the batter at 90 miles per hour. Yet, the greatest hitter of all time, Ted Williams, was able to reduce Adair’s detailed study into a simple law that separates the strong hitter from the mediocre. Just as Einstein was able to reduce his theory of relativity to a single equation, Williams was able to distill the science of hitting in a single sentence: Get a good pitch to hit. I have long wondered if we could do the same for the game of basketball. 

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