BeachedBear;842501134 said:
I would add that there may be something about hand size and finger length that may reduce the pool of effective practitioners. Monty loved the shot and got quite a number of Cal players to make effective use of it in pretty short order. Not at the Kareem level, but enough to make it effective against the likes of Cal's competition.
:gobears:
The basic hook shot is relatively easy to learn, and as you pointed out a good coach like Montgomery could teach a hook shot to his players in a relatively short time. I think the reason you don't see the hook shot much now is that the game has changed to a game of muscle and force. The players today all like to jump, and the majority of players are leapers, some extraordinary leapers. At great risk to themselves, they throw caution to the winds, and try to jump up and over everyone else to score. You can't get up very high by taking off on one foot, like for a hook shot or a layup. So they spend most of their playing careers taking off on two feet. Even the defenders jump in the air to block shots, which in the past would earn a rebuke from your coach.
The hook shot is made for the player who can't jump very high. It is highly accurate. The basic hook shot is taken by releasing the ball directly over the shoulder, with your shoulders in line with the basket as you take off straight up on the opposite foot. The shot is unblockable by a player of the same height as the shooter. The reason is that you have the entire width of your body, plus the length of your shooting arm all between defender and the ball. He just can't get close to the ball to block it. If you face a taller player, instead of taking off straight up, you can take off and fade away from the defender as you shoot the shot. I'm short and I used a hook shot all through high school and years after, and never had one blocked. None of my teammates had their hooks blocked either.
The thing one has to develop in using this hook shot is court awareness. With your back to the basket, you have to know approximately where the basket is, and where your defender is, because you are not going to look at the basket, until the very last second when you are releasing the ball. When I was growing up, some players could not learn this, so they turned toward the basket early, and almost faced the basket when they released the shot. That is a shot which could be blocked, so most of us players considered such a style of shooting to be ineffective, and it was not popular, even ridiculed when I played. Kareem changed everything about the hook shot. He was such a spectacular athlete, that he could almost face the basket but could get away without getting his shot blocked, by having such height, such long arms, and jumping ability that he could attain an almost superhuman release point for a shot.
Then along came the jump hook, which I never liked. Maybe because I was not a good athlete, and the shot seems to require great coordination to combine jumping with hooking, all while almost facing the basket. I think as long as players love to jump, you won't see a return of the basic hook shot, just as you are seeing the disappearance of the layup, which is also a bad idea. By taking off on one foot, you get to the basket much quicker than if you take off on two feet off a jump stop.
I think if players who don't have much jumping ability want to be able to compete in modern basketball, then one way would be to learn the basic hook shot. Too bad we don't have some film clips of Bob McKeen to show how easy it was to shoot and learn. He couldn't jump very high, but he made All-American, much of it based on his accuracy with the hook shot.
