nonshooting arm to hold off the defender. you see the hook shot all the time now. back when the hook shot was a new idea the guy who perfected it was kareem abdul jabar. he was 7'2" with long arms and good coordination so it was almost impossible for a defender to stop one of his hook shots. you couldn't reach him. he mastered the art of creating distance between himself and the other guy. he got so good at the hook shot he could make them so far from the basket his hook shot got its own name when he did it. they called it the sky hook. kareem abdul jabar's sense of distance, the way he could look all alone on the court in the sky hook moments burns forever in my mind as a kid who watched basketball growing up. it turned out to be a metaphor for not just his experience on the basketball court but part of the way he lived his life. in an essay this year mr. ab tul jabar wrote about his reasons