everyone knows the shammgod crossover; it's easily one of the sickest moves in basketball.
if you don't, here's some educational material (bleacher report):
true fans of the game may also know it as "el latigo", or "the whip". european players like danko cvjeticanin and dragan kicanovic were embarrassing defenders with it long before god shammgod pulled off the move in the 1997 ncaa regional finals vs arizona.
but shammgod still gets credit for making it a household name. as jamal crawford once said, "i’ve seen people over the years try to imitate it but nobody can make it look the way he does.”
my favorite shammgod ever is probably the one lamar odom did at the rucker in 2003:
i remember listening to isiah thomas talk about why kyrie irving is the best ball handler ever. zeke was explaining that most great ball handlers keep the ball "in the box" - always under control, in front of them, with maximum security. but kyrie has the ability to go "outside the box" while still keeping the ball on a string.
the sham is the most extreme form of going outside of the box. you literally throw the ball away and snatch it back at the last second.
now, what's even more disrespectful than the shammgod is the counter cross on top of the sham. let me explain.
smart, instinctual, aggressive defenders can recognize when a sham is coming, so they'll jump not towards the direction the ball is thrown, but to the side of the snatch. essentially, they're thinking and moving one step ahead of the ball handler.
so the real dirty move is when the ball handler is one step ahead of the defender who's one step ahead.
for example, tony wroten's shammgod into a crossover at the seattle basketball pro am:
got ‘em right here:
but by far the nastiest move i've seen in a long time was will bynum's fake sham into a hesitation dribble in the big3:
so smooth. so clean. so utterly disrespectful.
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