Tony Parker Claims He Invented the Teardrop Shot

According to San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker, he was the first to use the teardrop shot. Parker claims he came up with the deft move as a child, but he couldn’t possibly be more incorrect. Per the NY Times (via BDL): “It is unclear who first shot a teardrop, or who first called it that. Some credit Bob Cousy, a Boston Celtics star of the 1950s. Others point to Hank Luisetti, a Stanford player from the 1930s known for his running one-handed shot. The San Antonio Spurs’ Tony Parker, generally viewed as the league’s current teardrop master, insisted that he came up with the shot as a child. ‘I got copyrights on that,’ he said. ‘I did that because I was small and it was the only way I could get a shot off on the bigs. I grew a little bit later.’ […] George Gervin, a Hall of Fame player who turned the finger-roll layup into an art form in the late 1970s, is regarded as a teardrop visionary. In his modified version, he extended his arm toward the basket and simply let the ball trickle off his hand, almost as an afterthought. If a defender got in the way, Gervin flicked his wrist just so, sending the ball on a high-arcing parabola. It was an underhand scoop so delicate and precise that the basketball could have been a Fabergé egg. Basketball experts will endlessly debate the finer points of a finger roll versus a teardrop: broadly speaking, a finger roll is underhanded, and a teardrop is tossed from a high point. Still, Gervin said he was transfixed by Game 1 of the Warriors-Spurs series, and especially by Stephen Curry, who is half innovator and half throwback, as spontaneous as he is prepared. ‘He was like Fred Astaire,’ Gervin said. ‘He was dancing and twirling around, gliding across the floor. We ain’t seen that in a while.'”