WORKING HOOKSHOT PRO
WORKING HOOKSHOT FREE

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as Alcindor became known following his conversion to Islam, would go on to develop the most devastating hook shot in basketball history.

WORKING HOOKSHOT PRO

In the early 1960s, unbeknownst to Hagan, there was a very tall teenager in New York City monitoring the Kentuckian’s pro career.Ī young Lew Alcindor had started to learn the hook shot through what is called “the George Mikan drill.” Named for the dominant big man of the early NBA, the Mikan drill was essentially comprised of shooting hook shots over and over with each hand while moving steadily away from the basket. “You have to make those kind of adjustments.” Yet even when confronted by the shot-swatting Bill Russell or the 7-foot Wilt Chamberlain, he continued to employ the hook shot, too.Īgainst the giant Chamberlain, “I just had to loft the hook shot a little higher,” Hagan says. In the 1957-58 NBA playoffs, Hagan averaged 27.7 points in the postseason to help the Hawks (who are now in Atlanta) win their only championship. Instead, Hagan carved out a stellar pro career - six-time NBA All-Star - from 1956-66 as a smallish forward. Louis Hawks, an attempt was made to convert him to guard. When the 6-4 Hagan broke in with the NBA’s St. “I knew where I was (in relation to the goal) from the lines on the floor.”

WORKING HOOKSHOT FREE

“I actually got to the point I could sit there with my back to the basket just outside the free throw line on the side, 4, 5 feet from the basket and just throw it up from behind my back without even looking,” Hagan says. He also perfected the shot that became his signature.

Playing for Adolph Rupp at UK, Hagan was a two-time, AP First Team All-American contributed to an NCAA championship (1951) and averaged 24 points a game on an unbeaten team (1953-54). “I was like ‘My God, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.’ That really made me fall in love with the hook shot.” “He took hook shots from the forward position, we’re talking about 18, 22 feet out on the floor,” Hagan says of Lavelli. In Madison Square Garden, a Yale forward named Tony Lavelli expanded Hagan’s conception of what the hook shot could be. “By then, I was shooting a hook shot,” he says.Īfter that ’49 state tournament, Hagan was flown to New York City to see the Kentucky Wildcats play in the NCAA Tournament East Region. In the 1949 Kentucky Sweet Sixteen finals, Hagan scored a then-record 41 points to lead Owensboro to the high school state championship. “Then, (I started) just turning my back to the basket and just turning to develop both hands, both arms. “I had access to the YMCA downtown in the summertime, and I remember going down there and just putting my back to the basket and really just doing a layup left-handed,” Hagan says. No one in Owensboro then had the expertise to teach the hook shot, so Hagan sought to instruct himself. “He threw up a hook shot, and I don’t think I had ever seen one. “I went to see the Hilltoppers and Bob Lavoy was, I think, about a 6-7 center,” Hagan recalls. “He could tell from where he was on the floor how he needed to (direct) his shot.”Īs a student at Owensboro (Ken.) High School in the late 1940s, Hagan, now 86, first remembers seeing a hook shot while attending a Western Kentucky University game.

“The thing about Cliff, he didn’t even have to look at the goal (to make a hook shot),” says Frank Ramsey, Hagan’s UK teammate, NBA rival and fellow member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Not only could the 6-foot-4 player make hook shots from the pivot, he could make them from out on the floor. Hagan was able to shoot the hook shot with either hand. “The best I ever saw,” former UK coach Joe B. There is a player from Kentucky basketball history whose success with the hook shot is said to have helped inspire Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s “skyhook.”Ĭliff Hagan has a definite theory on why the shot that helped make him a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer has faded from modern basketball.Īccording to those who saw Hagan play in his glory days as a Kentucky Wildcats and NBA star, he was the Van Gogh of the hook shot.

Working hookshot