YouTube Gold: Blocking The Skyhook

More people did it than we ever realized

A while back we saw a YouTube video that discussed how difficult it was to block Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s signature move, the Skyhook, and it said only two or three people had ever done it, with Wilt Chamberlain and Bill “Poodles” Willoughby among them.

The problem is, we keep finding more video evidence of other players who pulled this off.

This video is as comprehensive as we have seen. The Chamberlain blocks are on here of course, but there are others that we hadn’t seen before.

Ralph Sampson got one, and he got it the hard way, at or near the peak of the shot.

Boston Celtic Robert Parish got one too and the Willoughby block is here too (what makes his so striking is that, unlike the other guys here, who are all quite tall, Willoughby was just 6-8).

Bill Walton got one from behind. Hakeem Olajuwon blocked one as well.

Nate Thurmond got one as well and, most strikingly, so did Manute Bol (look how far away from Kareem he is and think about that for a minute - OMG).

Finally we see Chamberlain get a pair during Kareem’s rookie season.

Still, it’s an elite list. As far as we can determine, only eight guys ever did it. The oddball on the list is Willoughby. Everyone else is at least 6-11.

Willoughby, who was a half-foot shorter than Kareem, was one of the first guys to go to the NBA directly out of high school, in his case in 1975. Moses Malone went to the ABA in 1974 but didn’t get to the NBA for a couple of years when the ABA-NBA merged, and Darryl Dawkins was also drafted in 1975, but he was a first round pick. Willoughby went in the second.