LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers attempts a jump shot.Jason Miller/Getty Images
Some of my earliest and clearest basketball memories involve watching the University of Michigan's Fab Five destroy rims (and helpless NCAA defenders) with stunning ferocity, and I still remember where I was when Vince Carter fully leapt over a seven-foot-two-inch Frenchman for that unimaginable dunk in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
It was always the dunkers – not the passers or shot blockers, and certainly not the bland shooters – that swept me off my adolescent feet.
At some point, though, my love of the posterizing dunk seemed to plateau. I started paying more attention to players such as Ray Allen and his beautifully consistent shot: the mechanics, the technique, the exactness. Maybe this increased interest in shooting (and the shot-makers) was because, unlike dunking, shooting is something you can continue to do and (conceivably) improve on as you age. Maybe, if I put in enough time at the gym, I'd be like Ray Allen, too.
The journalist and lifelong hoops junkie, Shawn Fury, was always smitten with the jumper, too; his new book Rise and Fire is a review of this very specific athletic action, and a mix of memoir, analysis and well-researched history of those who've mastered what has become basketball's most important shot.
Indeed, it's hard to imagine a time when the jump shot wasn't a crucial part of the sport. But Fury goes back to its genesis, before the Second World War, when the two-handed set shot still ruled the court. He traces the shot's growth, through regions and eras, focusing on the players who used the shot to transform – and eventually dominate – the game.
The pioneering jump shooters used it in order to score – or at least try to score – over larger defenders. Predictable, this change wasn't welcomed by everyone. As Fury notes, sportswriters "ridiculed" the shot, while coaches "fought against it, fearful of losing control."
One of the book's most interesting passages recounts an epic shooting battle between two jump shooters from Iowa. The "futuristic" Denise Long ended the game with 64 points, leading her team to an overtime win; her rival Jeanette Olson finished with a garish 76 points. Both players primarily used their newfangled jump shot to rack up point after point after point. In 1969, Long was the first woman selected in the NBA draft, chosen in the 13th round (the draft was much longer back in the day) by San Francisco Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli, who hoped to start a women's professional league and have Long as its star – a fairly radical idea considering, at the time, many parts of the United States still forbade women from playing varsity sports.
Later, Fury takes us to Indiana, and the maestros Jimmy Rayl and Rick Mount. When it comes to shooting, unlike driving to the basket, height and strength are (mostly) irrelevant – Rayl, for instance, weighed around 140 pounds – meaning that good shooters, with their blend of balance, dexterity and precision, can still succeed. Today, Stephen Curry is the most intimidating basketball player in the world. He is six foot three and weighs 190 pounds.
It wasn't until the late 1970s, and the introduction of three-point line, that the jump shot had its most dramatic impact on the sport, a rule change that many of the games pundits and commentators thought would be ruinous, with some even deeming it "immoral." In 1980, the first year the league implemented the three-point shot, the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers attempted a scant 100 threes the entire year. In winning the 2014 NBA Finals, the San Antonio Spurs attempted 118 threes in the five-game series alone. Considering how much the shot dominates the current NBA landscape, the timing of Fury's book is apt. We're living in the golden age of the jump shot.
The narrative, monotonous at times, is helpfully aerated when Fury steps back from survey and synopsis. He notes that the game, as it has always done, will continue to evolve, and from an entertainment standpoint, basketball games fuelled by all these long-distance jump shots may soon become tedious, with spectators potentially growing disinterested with an over-reliance on drive-and-kick spot-up shooting.
Early in Rise and Fire, Fury, not as a fan but as a participant, describes the joy of being alone in a gym, shooting jump shots.
"Roughly 34 years after I first picked up a ball," he writes, "there's still nothing like being on the court – inside or outside, with teammates or alone – firing away with the jumper."
I'll always love watching the new crop of high-flyers, but Fury's right: Few adults would ever spend 60 minutes alone in a gym dunking a ball over and over again, whereas an hour-long shooting session is both relaxing and invigorating. In this context, away from the professional leagues, championship games, and adrenalin, is when shooting a basketball might be its most appealing; solitary, meditative, precise, undramatic, but always purposeful.
Iain Reid is the author of two memoirs and winner of the 2015 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. His first novel, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, will be published in June.