You did things with the basketball that even today you don't see. If you want to be Kenny Sailor, you better bring a big sack lunch because it's going to take you all. Thinking of contributions to basketball. The first guy that developed the modern jump shot. Kenny Sailors wasn't born a basketball star. His beginnings were humble. The youngest of six children in a fatherless home. Kenny's hard-nosed mother, Korra, raised the family on a farmstead in Hillsdale, Wyoming, east of Cheyenne. My mother was a, she was a disciplinarian from the word grow. And I remember my job in my mother right out there with me in the summertime. Hot boy was hot down there. My brother would cultivate with the horses that, that horse drawn cultivator and get the weeds on the side of the rows of potatoes. But then the weeds in between and right up next to the potatoes, you had to either pull them up by hand or cut them out with a hole. Well that was my mother's job in mine. And I suppose I was nine years old at the time, maybe ten, but not very old. And I made a mistake one day. I was hot, thirsty, and hungry. I was always hungry. And I said, my mom, I'm getting off a tire of this hole in potatoes. She didn't answer me for a while and I knew something was wrong. And she finally said, well son, if you really feel that way, just take your hole and go to the house. Well I knew the way she said it. It didn't sound just right. She says, Kenneth, that's what she called me. Take your hole and go to the house and just don't come to the separate table tonight. I could have eaten a dead skunk road kill right then. I was hungry, I was, you know. And I picked up the hole and started home. I was there from, mentioned, not wanting to hold again. Kenny learned not to mess with his mother, but his big brother Bud was another matter. When they weren't tending to the fields, Bud and Kenny would take to the family basketball hoop, which happened to be mounted to a windmill. I thought I could beat anybody, but I found out my big old brother. He's good enough and big enough to give me trouble. And I was probably in the sixth grade when he first started out. I dribble, but I couldn't get around him even in those days with my dribble. He was good enough and he just blocked the shots, you know. And I got tired of it. I kept thinking about how I could get a shot off over it. In those days, basketball wasn't the high flying aerial show we see today. Players instead favored the flat-footed set shot. But I just dribbled up to him and jumped. When I got up, I suppose I was at least two feet off of the ground. And he did that because he could get his bigger brother moving and then just quickly jump up in the air and shoot the ball and he could then compete with an older brother. As sailors entered high school, chorus sailors moved the family to Laramie. Kenny thrived there, starring in football, track and basketball as well as in the classroom. Four years later, in 1940, he enrolled at the University of Wyoming and went out for basketball under Coach Everett Shelton. Sailors relied on his athleticism to overcome his short stature. He was a skilled dribbler and passer and a solid defender. He kept his jump shot in his back pocket at first. I didn't shoot at all that much. My first year or two because I didn't know what the coaches would think. And it was a non-jumping, non-leaping game. I have Shelton, who's a Hall of Fame coach, had never seen that shot before. But he was smart enough to know that Kenny could do this and he could gain an advantage on his opponents so he let him shoot it. Coach Shelton believed his team was championship material. They quickly became a powerhouse, besting college teams, as well as the more experienced teams of the amateur athletic union or the AAU. Ab Shelton, he had a mantra, will play anybody, anytime, anywhere. And so, usually he would take the teams three day trip back to New York City and play everybody that would play back on the East Coast in December and half of January before school started the second semester. For us, a school like Wyoming, who's never been in the big time before as far as college ball is concerned, he said, we can't do that playing out here in Wyoming. We've got to go to where the center of basketball publicity is and that's out of Madison Square Garden in New York City. Well, you know, I'd never been out of the state of Wyoming before. In 1943, the Cowboys beat Georgetown to capture the NCAA championship. Kenny Sailors was awarded the most valuable player. He was a leader and incredible ball handler and he was now perfecting and utilizing his jump shot to baffle opponents with regularity. He wasn't the winner. He was the ultimate team man. His ball handling was way ahead of its time. He was a real competitor. I'd love to have coached him because I'm telling you, he would force his will on you just right now. After their NCAA championship victory, the Cowboys squared off against the rival NIT tournament champions, St. John's, and defeated them as well, making Wyoming 1943's unquestioned national champions. The basketball season's grand finale, given greater significance tonight as the American Red Cross, reached the $28,000 benefit of Madison Square Garden's capacity crowd and a killer, diller game it is. Wyoming scores. Seconds later, St. John's Redmond retaliated, boy cough, cages of field goals. What hangs on this ball game amounts to a national basketball crown. Both teams, the Kingpen's, are very respective loops. By the count 52 to 47, and Wyoming's Cowboys are the undisputed Kings of the Court. Kenny's 43 team, I think they beat the top military team. They beat the top AU champion. Tremendous record, if you just really kind of know the history of it, it was a clean sweep like you could never believe. And it was done by a bunch of Wyoming kids basically. But 1943 had more in store for Kenny sailors. He got married to a fellow university student named Maryland Corbin. Shortly after, sailors enlisted in the Marine Corps. Sailors served on a troop transport ship in the South Pacific where he commanded 40 Marines in charge of security. Mustard out in 1946, Kenny came back home to Wyoming and his wife, Maryland. He went back to the University of Wyoming where he took graduate courses and had one year left of basketball eligibility, which he took advantage of to become an all-American for the second time. In one particular game, a photographer captured what would become the iconic introduction of sailors' jump shot to the world featured in Life magazine. In 1946, the year Kenny sailors finished his college career, promoters formed the Basketball Association of America, a professional league, that would eventually become the NBA. Sailors and his jump shot quickly proved their worth in the professional ranks. But after five years in professional basketball, sailors decided to call it a career and go back home to his family. Kenny and Maryland sought a simpler lifestyle and Maryland's health problems necessitated fresh air and the outdoors. We bought the heart six ranch from the money my wife had saved during the time I played. We operated that heart six ranch up in Jackson Hole for about nineteen or twenty years. The sailors decided to try something even more remote, so they packed up and moved to Alaska. It's a place we'd always wanted to go to, and we started a guiding and outfitting business up there. Their business kept them busy seasonally, but there was time in the offseason for sailors to teach and coach basketball. He convinced the Alaska Public Schools to start a girls basketball program, and he coached the Engoon Girls High School team to state championships. You better believe they love basketball, as their whole life in that little town of Engoon, I think they had five gymnasiums. I tell you, it was up in the hills. Everybody played basketball. These old boys are their seventies out there playing basketball. Yeah, now they're women. Kenny and Demarrole made their way back to Wyoming in 1999, where Marilyn passed away in 2002, and Kenny followed her in 2016. Still today, the sailors legacy remains as strong as ever in the Cowboys State. I guess, truthfully, if I want to talk about what I'm respect and most about Kenny's sailors, is what a hell of a man is. Thank you.