The Shot Fake
When Sam Young shot the ball, he was lights out. When he didn't, he was even better.
Sam Young fakes a shot, getting Oklahoma State's Obi Muonelo in the air in the second half of a second-round NCAA tournament game Sunday, March 22, 2009, in Dayton, Ohio. (Al Behrman/Associated Press)
Sam Young fakes a shot, getting Oklahoma State's Obi Muonelo in the air in the second half of a second-round NCAA tournament game Sunday, March 22, 2009, in Dayton, Ohio. (Al Behrman/Associated Press)
The Shot Fake
When Sam Young shot the ball, he was lights out. When he didn't, he was even better.
Craig Meyer
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
April 5, 2019
Craig Meyer
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
April 5, 2019
Even all these years later, as some memories become hazy or fade entirely, the mere mention of Sam Young’s shot fake elicits laughs just as reliably as the move itself used to fool defenders.
There’s nothing inherently comical about the former Pitt star’s patented maneuver, even if some of the stories it helped birth may be. It was simply so unstoppable, so unforgettable, that all one can do is chuckle.
“Sometimes, we’d play and you would go, ‘Stay down, don’t go for the pump fake,’ and the next play, you go for the pump fake,” Gary McGhee said. “You’re the person that said it and you still go for the pump fake. That’s just how good it was, man.”
That an act of deception would be the most indelible remnant of a college career that saw Young earn third-team All-American honors as a senior, twice be named to an all-conference first team and finish fourth on the school’s all-time scoring list seems unusual.
It speaks, though, to the beautiful bizarreness of it, that such a mundane aspect of virtually any other player’s game is something that can, if even anecdotally, usurp most other aspects of the career of one of the best players in program history.
“My gracious, that little fake,” said Tony Salesi, Pitt’s athletic trainer at the time. “Everybody said it wouldn’t work in the pros and it worked everywhere. It’s probably working wherever he’s playing now.”
There’s a balletic fluidity to Young’s pump fake, allowing it to stand out that much more on a team known for a rugged and deliberate, albeit ruthlessly efficient, aesthetic.
It began as any pump fake does, with his body turned toward the basket and his hands starting their ascent. From there, a style that was unmistakably his followed, going far beyond where many cared or dared to go. Young would hold the ball high above his head, arms nearly fully extended, sometimes even pushing his shooting hand forward and keeping a slight grasp on the ball with his enormous mitt as if he were about to shoot.
In that same motion, he would get up on the tips of his toes, with little more than a fragment of a toenail and the sliver of his shoe below it preventing him from traveling.
Sam Young shoots over Siena's Edwin Ubiles on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008, at the Petersen Events Center. (Matt Freed/Post-Gazette)
“Once he really became consistent with his shot, it was so hard not to go for [the shot fake],” Brad Wanamaker said of Sam Young. (Matt Freed/Post-Gazette & Keith Srakocic/Associated Press)
“His footwork was what sold the shot fake,” Jamie Dixon said. “He’d raise it to different levels. Sometimes, he’d exaggerate it and put it way up high. Other times, it would be a quicker, shorter shot fake. Always his feet were squared to the basket, so he sold the shot. He always made a hard pivot, a strong pivot. I always thought that was a big part of it.”
What came next was the payoff.
As the ball and his feet reached the apex of movement, seemingly pausing for a fraction of a second to really sell it, the oncoming defender would, almost without fail, jump or at least lunge in a way that would throw him off balance, carrying his momentum forward as Young sought to blow right by. Right as the duped opponent would do so, Young would come back down, sometimes with a clear lane to throw down some of the high-flying, thunderous dunks for which he became known by the end of his time in Oakland.
As Young’s stature rose and he became a more prominent part of opponents’ scouting reports, those players and coaches knew what to expect whenever the Maryland native collected the ball, his eyes locked on the basket. It mattered little.
“It was in the Big East tournament, the one we won in 2008,” Gilbert Brown said. “We’re playing against Louisville. I’m actually on the court and I could hear it. Sam shot fakes Earl Clark and you can hear [Rick] Pitino scream, ‘Earl, you know it’s coming!’ It’s crazy. Even when you knew it was coming, he would still get defenders off their feet every time.”
Those defenders would sometimes even be his own teammates, a number of whom he had been playing against and using that same move against for at least two years, giving the fake an almost hypnotic power.
“Once he really became consistent with his shot, it was so hard not to go for it,” Brad Wanamaker said. “It not only worked in games, but he did it in practice. Just imagine — we practice with him every day knowing what he’s going to do and we’re still jumping.”
“Sometimes, we’d play and you would go, ‘Stay down, don’t go for the pump fake,’ and the next play, you go for the pump fake.”
To not take his up-fake seriously was to make a calculated and dangerous gamble with consequences worse than being momentarily embarrassed. By Young’s final two college seasons, he had developed into a good, if not excellent outside shooter, making 38.3 percent of his 3-pointers as a junior and 37.2 percent of them as a senior.
Were he not able to regularly drain those shots, his fake, regardless of how carefully crafted it was, would have been moot, a tool as useless as a lighter in the middle of the ocean. There had to be some kind of clout, some kind of leverage, and over his time at Pitt, Young developed plenty of it.
“If you didn’t respond to his shot fake, he’s one of the all-time great mid-range shooters I’ve ever coached or been around,” assistant coach Brandin Knight said. “When he would catch it 15 to 17 feet, he had such a quick release and kind of an awkward delivery, which is what I think made people go for the shot fake so often. His ability to make shots, it put people in jeopardy and made them have to put their hand up.”
Still, some of his teammates were willing to take the chance.
“I’d rather him just shoot it and maybe he makes it,” Brown said. “That was always my mentality on it.”
An unorthodox maneuver came from an orthodox background.
Young was a relative latecomer to basketball, not playing or watching the sport until he got to high school. As a sophomore at Friendly High School in Fort Washington, Md., he was scrimmaging and was set to pull up for a shot. His opponent closed out on him faster than anticipated, when he was already part of the way through his form. He rose up on the balls of his feet without them leaving the ground and came back down, breezing by the defender. Over time, he practiced it enough to not only smooth out whatever awkward kinks came with his first attempts, but to master it.
The fake was the quirkiest product of an obsessive, voracious work ethic that became folklore in college.
Among his teammates and coaches, Young was famous for keeping an air mattress in the Panthers’ locker room at the Petersen Events Center, providing him with a quick, convenient place to sleep following shooting sessions and workouts that would sometimes drag on until 2 a.m.
Even after games in which he played 35 or 40 minutes, Young would change into his practice gear and train for another hour or two if his play that day didn’t meet his lofty standards. Basketball, for him, was life, so much so that he would even seek out pick-up games against normal students at Trees Hall if other options weren’t available to him.
Sam Young dunks in the first half of Pitt's Sweet 16 game against Xavier in Boston, Thursday, March 26, 2009. (Elise Amendola/Associated Press)
That tedious, laborious grind showed itself on the court. After averaging 7.9 points per game as a freshman and 7.2 as a sophomore, he averaged 18.1 as a junior and 19.2 as a senior, making him the most productive offensive weapon on a team that made it all the way to the Elite Eight in 2009.
Success did little to change someone so preternaturally focused. Brian Regan, Pitt’s director of basketball operations, could remember entering the lobby of the team’s hotel after the Big East tournament championship in 2008 to a chorus of chants of “One more year!” from fans who didn’t want him to depart for the NBA. Young asked Regan what they meant and after he got an explanation, he simply smirked, as if it was a thought that had never crossed his mind. To those around the program who knew him, Sam was simply Sam, the guy who was just as capable of writing a poem as he was doing a backflip on command.
“He was the most athletic person I’ve been around in my life,” DeJuan Blair said. “I knew he was a different breed. He was a superstar.”
Young went on to spend four seasons in the NBA but has been out of the league and playing overseas since 2013. His shot fake, though, lives on, attracting imitators and admirers alike.
In 2011, when Young was in his second season with the Memphis Grizzlies, then-Houston Rockets forward Shane Battier said the best fake in the league belonged to either Young or Kobe Bryant, the latter of whom was only included because, as Battier noted, “you have to honor it.” Jeff Green, a veteran forward now with the Washington Wizards who once played AAU ball with Young, has been using a variation of the fake this season, as has Joel Embiid, who was a 14-year-old in his native Cameroon for most of Young’s senior season at Pitt in 2009.
Those adaptations have turned what could have been a novelty into something more lasting. When Young was a senior, Regan had an NBA general manager tell him the move wouldn’t make it at the professional level. It was something more talented and seasoned players would eventually catch on to. That team, strangely enough, ended up drafting Young and the next year, Regan happened to run into that same general manager, who had a message to pass along.
“Hey,” he said, “isn’t it amazing how much people fall for that shot fake?”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
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