Set, jump, hook, scoop, tap, layup. Runner, bank, follow. Distill basketball to its elements, and the shot sits at the top of the game's periodic table. No sport has at its core a simpler and more ubiquitous act. Hitting a basketball is vexatiously problematic; stickhandling a puck and throwing a tight spiral are only slightly less so. Ah, but to a basketball player, shooting a shot-shooting your shot - is the most life-affirming of skills, most fundamental of fundamentals, as quotidian a task as sleeping, eating or breathing.

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