When does a basketball move become yours?

Tim Hardaway didn't invent the crossover. Manu Ginóbili didn't invent the Eurostep. The skyhook got its name from a broadcaster. And one dribble can be called the Shammgod or the Bodiroga depending on the basketball culture you learned it in. In basketball culture, ‘ownership’ often depends less on who did a move first than on who made it unforgettable.

In a feature on Serbian 3x3 player Dejan Majstorović, FIBA used a curious description. Majstorović beat his defender with what FIBA called the ‘Shammgod — or Bodiroga move.’ Majstorović himself said he had copied it from Serbian great Dejan Bodiroga.

That small phrase reveals something bigger about basketball culture. Across the Atlantic, essentially the same piece of ballhandling carries the name of God Shammgod. Same family of movements. Different hero. Different memory.

A Dallas Mavericks profile makes the history even less tidy: similar versions had appeared in Europe earlier, with Bodiroga popularising his variation there while Shammgod's name became attached to the move in American basketball culture. So who does the move actually belong to?

Invention is often the wrong test

We like to tell the history of signature moves as if one player suddenly invented something nobody had ever seen before. Basketball rarely works that neatly. Take the crossover. Tim Hardaway became so closely associated with his version that it became the Killer Crossover, after earlier being known as the UTEP Two-Step.

NBA.com is explicit about the distinction: Hardaway did not invent the crossover. He was the player who made his version famous. Manu Ginóbili presents a similar case. The Eurostep existed before he entered the NBA. NBA.com describes Ginóbili not as its inventor, but as the player who popularised it in the league after already using the movement in Argentina and Italy.

That distinction matters. A player does not have to perform a movement first for basketball culture to connect that movement to them. They have to make people think of them when they see it.

Twenty NBA games. One move that survived.

No example makes the point more sharply than God Shammgod. Official NBA statistics record just 20 regular-season games for him, all with Washington in 1997-98. Yet his name remains part of basketball culture. Not because of those NBA numbers. Because of a dribble.

Shammgod later recalled that the movement emerged almost accidentally during Providence's 1997 NCAA Tournament run when another move went wrong: the ball got farther away from him than intended, he recovered it with his opposite hand, and a sequence that would eventually carry his name appeared. The move has since been copied by NBA players and players on courts around the world.

There is something wonderfully strange about that. Twenty NBA games can disappear almost completely from basketball's collective memory. A fraction of a second with the ball can survive for decades.

The player doesn't always name the move

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's famous hook grew from a shot that was already part of basketball. NBA.com's history of the skyhook notes that his version evolved partly from practising the Mikan Drill; hook shots themselves were not new. His version became something different: higher, harder to contest, instantly recognisable through repetition.

Then somebody gave it a name. NBA sources credit Milwaukee Bucks broadcaster Eddie Doucette with coining skyhook. Doucette was famous for inventing colourful names for players, areas of the floor and actions during games. That tells us something important about signature moves.

The player performs the movement. But somebody else can write its story. A broadcaster. An opponent. Kids on a playground. Television. Today, a highlight account or social platform. A signature move needs an audience.

Sometimes the name remembers a place

Nikola Jokić now has a move whose name doesn't directly contain his own. The Sombor Shuffle is named after Sombor, his hometown in Serbia. According to NBA.com, the unusual one-legged fadeaway developed while Jokić was rehabilitating an ankle injury and trying to reduce the load on the injured foot while shooting.

The move carries no surname. It carries a piece of biography. Hakeem Olajuwon's nickname lives inside the Dream Shake. Ginóbili's signature became associated with an entire continent through the Eurostep. Jokić's carries his hometown. Shammgod's carries a person. The NBA now catalogues all of these kinds of associations as part of basketball's language of signature moves.

The name therefore tells us more than how a player moves. It tells us who basketball remembers when it sees the movement.

And that's where it gets interesting

If two basketball cultures give essentially the same movement different names, is one of them wrong? The Shammgod/Bodiroga example suggests that the more interesting answer is probably no. Moves travel. Players watch other players. They copy. They change details. Something travels from a playground to college, from European basketball into the NBA, from professional basketball back to a local court where a kid tries it the next afternoon.

Basketball adds another layer. A move's name becomes a form of memory. The player who used a move first and the player who ultimately made it famous do not have to be the same person. That makes signature move a better phrase than ‘invention’. A signature isn't a patent. It's a handwriting style.

Copying is when a move becomes bigger than its maker

NBA.com describes the league as a ‘copycat league’ at times: effective moves are watched, borrowed, adapted and added to another player's game. Eventually, that means the movement starts escaping its original owner.

Kids learn a Eurostep without ever having watched Ginóbili. A guard uses a Shammgod without knowing the man behind the name played only 20 NBA games. A one-legged fadeaway no longer has to belong exclusively to Dirk Nowitzki. At first glance, that looks like a player losing ownership of a move. It is almost the opposite.

A move truly enters basketball culture when other players want it. And that is the paradox of cultural ownership in basketball: everyone starts copying it — and somehow your name still survives.

Sources used:

FIBA Basketball (2022), Majstorovic gets chance to join history books at Crelan FIBA 3x3 World Cup 2022 - source — https://www.fiba.basketball/en/news/3x3worldcup-2022-news-majstorovic-gets-chance-to-join-history-books-at-crelan-fiba-3x3-world-cup-2022

NBA.com, Brian Martin (2022), Signature impacts of Tim Hardaway, Manu Ginobili, Lindsay Whalen and Swin Cash - source — https://www.nba.com/news/remembering-tim-hardaway-manu-ginobili-lindsay-whalen-and-swin-cash

NBA.com, God Shammgod - Career Statistics - source — https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1539/career

Dallas Mavericks / NBA.com, Dwain Price (2020), God Shammgod finds purpose in life, has his own sneaker release on Monday - source — https://www.nba.com/mavs/godshammgod

Dallas Mavericks / NBA.com, In The Shadows: The Stories of God Shammgod & Mike Procopio - source — https://www.nba.com/mavs/en-las-sombras-las-historias-de-god-shammgod-y-mike-procopio-in-the-shadows-the-stories-of-god-shammgod-mike-procopio

NBA.com, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's signature sky hook notably absent in NBA's copycat world - source — https://www.nba.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-skyhook-absent-modern-nba

Portland Trail Blazers / NBA.com, The Master of Nicknames: Eddie Doucette Takes Home the Curt Gowdy Award - source — https://www.nba.com/blazers/master-nicknames-eddie-doucette-takes-home-curt-gowdy-award-0

NBA.com (2023), 15 interesting facts about No. 15, Nikola Jokic - source — https://www.nba.com/news/15-interesting-facts-about-number-15-nikola-jokic

NBA.com, Signature Moves - source — https://www.nba.com/watch/list/collection/signature-moves

NBA.com, When Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki finally retires, his signature move will live on - source — https://www.nba.com/news/even-when-mavericks-dirk-nowitzki-finally-retires-his-signature-move-will-live