Come on, you guys!
You know I can't bend over.
When I got into the NBA, nearly everybody shot two-handed when it started
out.
I didn't - I was the freak. I shot them one-handed, you know.
My brother was a good ballplayer and a good athlete, and
we'd play one on one.
And I never could get a shot off, and he really enjoyed that because he was 6'5"
and I was just about, I don't know
5'7" probably. He used to tell me that you better find another game - this isn't your
game. It's for big men,
tall men.
High on the board, Sailors!
Somehow the idea come to me is if when I jump up - and I knew I could jump -
I jump straight up, bring the ball up right over my head,
and I, I let it go, and the thing went in.
He had, his feet was on the ground. He hadn't even left the floor.
And he said, "Kenny, you may have something there," he says, "you better develop that shot."
It took years - it didn't just happen overnight - to get my jump shot,
but it was the idea behind it.
Kids in their community started trying to imitate that shot
as soon as they saw it in Life Magazine.
And I had people tell me - even ballplayers tell me - that that's the first picture
I ever saw of a jump shot.
If you look, everybody is bound to the floor - their feet -
except mine, and that was, that was one of the standard rules in my day was
on defense or on offense,
you never left the floor.
Every time he comes
in here, somebody knows him. Yeah, he's pretty popular.
I'm not popular - that jump shot is popular.
He doesn't really take credit for it. He really doesn't.
Well, who'd know who's the first kid that
jumped in the air and shot a basketball? Just take it and run with it.
You know, who would possibly know?
Ray Meyer from DePaul
who coached there for many, many years,
he said it the best I think - "Sailors may not have been the first player jump in
the air and shoot the ball,
but he developed the shot that's being used today."
In 1943,
we won the NCAA, we beat the champions of the NIT
we beat the national service student champion,
and we beat the national AAU champions, Phillips 66.
There wasn't anybody else to beat.
I went as far as I could go in basketball, but
that still wasn't enough so I went into the pros and played
long enough to get a pension in the NBA.
Basketball was just about my whole life when I was growing up.
As I've gotten older and the good Lord has
shown me that there's far more things more important than
just sports or basketball. That's my girl.
Sixty years
of my life, I spent with that girl.
My wife and I had a wonderful marriage and it lasted a long time.
We enjoyed living with each other, we enjoyed our family, and
I don't know how it could've been any better.
She contacted this - what do you call it - dementia
and gradually, you lose your memory of
things way back. The doctors told me she wasn't gonna be around too much
longer.
It's tough, but the Lord gives you strength that you don't even know where it comes
from. He
just gives you the strength to go through most anything.
As an old man 90 years of age, I've experienced much
in my lifetime and all of it wasn't good, and
certainly all of it wasn't bad.
But one thing that has stood the test of time is God.
He has satisfied me in a way that
all the fame and success could never do.
Nothing does compare with my experience with Christ and the life that I've had in
him.
There's nothing in this world that can even come close to it.
I'm not in the Hall of Fame. So
far, I've never made it.
if I were to make the Hall of Fame today,
oh, you know, it'd be nice. I mean, I'm a human being just like everybody else.
But I know I belong to the greatest Hall of Fame that any man or woman can ever
belong to.
And when you belong to that,
and you know you belong to it, you don't worry about these
halls of fame that men created down here. It don't mean that much to you.