The Jump Shot

I was watching the Shock Absorbers, Detroit's women's pro basketball team playing the Sacramento, I'm thinking, Monarchs, when I saw something that was, truly, shocking. One of their players, a woman named Deanna Nolan, shot a jump shot. This was amazing in that, heretofore, women did not shoot jumpshots. They shot push shots while jumping. Let me explain. The term jump shot is actually a misnomer. Jumping up while shooting does not constitute a jump shot despite the logic there. Jumping up, stopping at the jump's peak, then shooting, then coming down, is what I, and now the world - hey, this blog gets around- understands to be a jump shot. It would be called the jumping up stopping shooting coming down shot if there was any real rhyme or reason to the universe, but then, let's be serious, Dubya is president. Back in the day, at the dawn of jump shots, my own was a thing of beauty. I would rise effortlessly above the other players regardless of their size, survey my surroundings, find a pretty girl's face among the crowd, make eye contact with the sweet thing, wink, look back at the basket and then toss the ball in a gentle arc through the net, before returning to the hardwood. Okay, I'm fibbing a little bit. I didn't wink. The trick here, was to stay in the air until your opponent, who had jumped up with you, returned to earth before you released the ball. If you can't visualize what I am describing, think of Michael Jordon in the early years before he had to fade away to get his shot off. You know, when he could still jump and wore an "I want to be like Doc" t-shirt in practice. So it was surprising to see a woman actually shoot this kind of shot. The stopping at the top of the jump had always eluded them until now. Defiance of gravity, like car maintenance, a "guy thing." I guess it won't be long before they will be doing the full 360 reverse slam left handed tomahawk net ripper dunk and I won't have a single shot left I can call my own. Oh well, that's progress I guess.