Landing a three-point shot is a skill that takes a lot of practice and a lot of natural ability, and an adept three-point shooter can be worth a great deal to a basketball team. It carries an element of risk – and this is why it is best left to the ones who have mastered the skill – but a good three-point shot can turn a game.

The niceties of the three point shot are as follows: In basketball there is an area underneath the basket from which shots are easier to make than others – this area is called the key. Outside that area runs an arc, a semi circle from which shots are worth the same as all shots inside the key – two points. Outside the semi-circle, anywhere else on the court, a successful shot earns you three points.

Obviously, the further you are from the net, the harder it is to shoot accurately. Some players, whose talents are most in evidence inside the key, might never try a single three-point shot all season. There are others who practise three-point shooting, and who are usually the ones that team-mates will try to give the ball with time running out and a deficit of around ten points.

Some of the most amazing three-point shots are complete luck, stabs in the dark from a team who have the ball deep in their half of the court with time running out. Under normal circumstances, you would prefer to be standing on the very edge of the three-point line to give yourself the best chance of hitting it – but that is not always possible.

Basketball is one of the most influential sports, culturally speaking, in the whole world. If you are looking for proof of this, then one of the clearest examples is the commonplace nature of the phrase “slam dunk”. From its original meaning as a type of basketball shot it has become almost as popular beyond the world of basketball as something that describes an endeavor that is easily and emphatically achieved. “Did you pass that exam?” “Oh yeah – it was a slam dunk!”.

To witness a slam dunk is quite something. It is not the most graceful of moves, not known for its finesse, but for players who have mastered the skill it is extremely effective. By powering through a clear run to the basket – or clearing the way themselves – physically powerful players can get themselves in a position to place themselves where they can jump high enough to actually get above the basket and power the ball down through the hoop. For greater emphasis you might hang on to the basket as you come down. It is something of a show-off move.

Having an accomplished slam dunk merchant in your team can be worth a great deal when it comes to winning games. The emphatic nature of the manoeuver can give your team a real lift and demoralise the opposition. If a team is playing a strong defense and blocking off all jump shots, the slam dunk can burst right through them and leave them wondering: Just how do you stop that?

In the pantheon of basketball greats, most people hold that the greatest ever to play the game was Michael Jordan. However, if there is to be a challenger to that title, the most deserving person to take that mantle would have to be Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain. His nickname was taken from the fact that Chamberlain’s height at the time of his NBA career was a massive seven feet and one inch. At one time in his career he weighed 300 lbs, and he is the only player ever to have scored 100 points in a single NBA match – for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks.

The “Stilt” nickname was actually coined during his high school days by a sportswriter in his native Philadelphia, and in actual fact the name was disliked by Chamberlain himself, who felt that it pigeonholed him simply as a tall person. Like it or not, the name stuck and as Chamberlain went on to be one of the greatest players ever to play the game it has lived on even after his death in 1999, at the age of 63. In life and as a player of the game, Chamberlain was broadly admired, considered a thoroughly nice person even in light of the claims in his 1991 autobiography that he had slept with close to 20,000 women in his life.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Chamberlain’s career point-scoring record is that it was achieved entirely before the introduction of the three-point rule, meaning that all of his baskets earned only two points each. Additionally, he had a famously atrocious record from one-point free throws (although on the day that he scored a hundred points in a game he managed to hit 28 out of 32 free throws – a career anomaly).

OK, so we all know what a slam dunk is, and we know a little about the alley-oop, too. But these are really basic basketball slang terms. Some of the more original slang terms that are used in basketball circles carry more interesting stories, and are worth looking at a bit more closely.

A few examples follow.

If you perform a move that leaves your opponent standing around like an idiot – perhaps you have managed to complete a slam dunk over his head, then you are said to have “posterized” him. This term comes from the usual shots used on posters of star basketball players in full flow with an opponent trying, but failing, to stop them. The implication is that this person will be on a poster, but as the poor mark standing and watching as you do something awesome.


“Hack-A-Shaq” is a tactical move which is pretty much indistinguishable from fouling your opponent. This is because it is fouling your opponent. It is only applicable, though, when playing against someon e you know can’t make free throws. Shaquille O’Neal, for all his ability with a basketball, is a terrible free-throw shooter – to the extent where teams feel confident fouling him. It stops him dunking the ball and he’s likely to miss the shots.
Finally, two terms which are entirely literal: “All Ball” and “Nothing But Net”. The first is shouted at a referee who has blown for a foul when you have blocked an opponent’s shot – the implication being that you haven’t touched your opponent, just slammed the ball away. The second applies to a jump shot you have hit which caught none of the rim on the way in. With that lovely “swish noise”, all it hit was net.

Hitting A Triple-Double


One of the things that marks out the best basketball players is versatility. With only five players on the court, it is fair to say that players are expected to be able to bring something on both offense and defense. The players who are most successful in doing this will often end up with a “triple double”. What’s one of those? Well, it is the name given to an achievement where a player manages a double-digit total in three of the following five categories.


(Opponent’s)

Most good attacking players will hit double figures for points in any game, often by the halfway mark in the game. The other two parts of the triple-double will depend on the player’s strengths. For instance, taller and larger players may get a fair share of blocked shots, because they are so hard to deliver a shot over. An alert, unselfish player can easily get ten assists in a game where their team has the upper hand.

Players with great hustle will get their share of steals and often of rebounds too – offensive and defensive rebounds count.

The tricky thing about getting a triple double is that often a player who is trying for it will find it harder to get, as there is little point trying to manufacture rebounds, and you should really be playing your game rather than waiting for the opportunity to pick up stats.

However, if you play your game to the best of your ability, a triple-double is within your reach (depending on which rules you are playing under, anyway).

The importance of merchandising to professional basketball teams has always been high, but the recent past has seen the saturation of an industry, with merchandise becoming so prominent that some sports have even gone so far as to provide branded coffins for fans who wish to be buried in their team’s colors. Although professional basketball has yet to go to this extent, there is little else that remains unbranded in this day and age.

When your baby is born, you can buy it some clothes in the team’s colors, ensuring that if they aren’t going to leave this world in team merchandise, their early days can at least be a display of team loyalty.
The most obvious form of merchandise is the team replica jersey.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious. Sitting in the arena watching the team play, any fan will naturally feel so much a part of the team that they wish they could play. The next best thing to playing for the team is to at least be able to dress like a player, and it also gives a chance to wear a replica team vest with your favorite player’s name and number on it. this forms a very firm bond between fan and team, something which makes for a greater atmosphere at games.

It is not uncommon to see musicians appear on stage or in videos wearing their team’s replica jerseys. Showing an identity connection with your team allows you to send a message to other fans and attract goodwill – something that sport is notable for fostering.

Basketball has taken a place in the hearts of so many people throughout the world that it is considered the number one sport in many countries, and a close second in many others. Although its global reach is still slightly behind that of football, basketball has given the world some of its most recognizable sports stars. Names like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and others have become household names far beyond their native USA, and the vests worn on the court have become a popular fashion item.

It has got to a point where people wear basketball merchandise often without really knowing much about the sport. The wearing of basketball vests in countries far neyond the shores of America is so widespread that it is something of a lottery as to whether someone wearing a Chicago Bulls shirt with “Jordan 23” on the back of it actually knows what a player Michael Jordan was. Within America, he is a sports icon. To a lot of others, he’s the guy in SpaceJam.

There could be a lot of arguing done as to whether this is a bad thing. Certainly, it is a little misleading to suggest that Michael Jordan is not known for his sporting ability in countries outside America. All over the world the NBA is shown on cable or terrestrial TV, and people in dozens of countries watched the all-conquering Chicago Bulls side of the 1990s carry all before them. If as a result, there are a few people wearing Bulls shirts who know little or nothing about the sport, then that’s how life is.

O'Neal began his career with the Orlando Magic, being selected with the first pick of that year’s NBA Draft. His size and scoring ability were desperately needed by the Magic, at that time a franchise of little note, and in his second season O'Neal was instrumental in taking the Magic to their first-ever playoff appearance. They would go all the way to the NBA Finals in his third season in 1994, where they would eventually be defeated in a 4-0 series sweep by the Houston Rockets.

It would take a move to the Los Angeles Lakers for O’Neal to finally experience the ultimate team achievement in basketball, winning the NBA Championship in 2000. The Lakers would repeat this achievement in 2001 and 2002, due in no small part to the contribution of Shaq.

Although Michael Jordan is most people’s choice for the title of Greatest NBA Player, he may not be the most talked-about player of all time. For reasons which have occasionally drawn him into off-court controversy and for his startling achievements on the court, Kobe Bryant has to be considered one of the biggest names in the sport, and is certainly one of the most storied active NBA players. Like many others, he was marked for greatness from the beginning, entering the NBA Draft in 1996 at the age of 17 and therefore skipping college.

Drafted by the Charlotte Hornets, Bryant was immediately traded to the Los Angeles Lakers and although he saw limited playing time, he was soon trusted with more time on the court. This did not always end the way he would have hoped, with one game against the Utah Jazz in the first round of the playoffs seeing Bryant miss three makeable shots that would have extended the series for the Lakers. Yet as Shaquille O’Neal remarked, it was telling that a player so young would even try such high-pressure shots.

With the arrival of the guru coach Phil Jackson at the Lakers in 1999, Bryant’s career really took off. Jackson’s tactical brain had been the key to the Chicago Bulls’ history-making decade of domination in the 1990s, and as the new century began the Lakers managed a three-peat of their own, with Bryant and O’Neal taking a starring role as the team won NBA Championships back-to-back-to-back in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Basketball Legends: Phil Jackson

When talking of the true legends of basketball, people always tend to refer to players – those who have scored a lot of baskets, have made important baskets, or have made assists to other players or stopped opposing players from scoring. However, no pantheon of basketball legends could ever be complete without paying tribute to the name of Phil Jackson – probably the greatest head coach in the history of the game. In the first 20 years of his coaching career Jackson won ten NBA titles, and he is still going. That means that half of the completed seasons in his career have ended with the ultimate prize.

If that’s not enough for you, then think on this. Only five times in the history of basketball has a team carried out a “three-peat” – winning three NBA titles back to back. On three of those occasions, the team was coached by Phil Jackson (twice with the Chicago Bulls in the 90s, and with the Los Angeles Lakers at the beginning of the 21st Century). The last time it happened with anyone other than Phil Jackson coaching was in the 1950s. There is no doubting that Phil Jackson has been blessed with talented players, but it says something that the tandem offense of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant finally kicked into gear in 1999 when Jackson arrived in Los Angeles.

Sometimes it isn’t the players that win titles. Sometimes it is the tactics and the game plan. If you were to select one man to put together the perfect game plan, Phil Jackson would have to be that man.