Kenneth L. Sailors

(1921- ) born at Bushnell, Kimball County, lived in Falls City. Professional and college basketball player, educator, coach, considered among the pioneers in basketball for inventing the one-handed jump shot in 1934, he played on the University of Wyoming's NCAA national championship basketball team in 1943, the same year he won the Chuck Taylor Medal as the outstanding college player of the year; played five seasons from 1946 to 1951 in the Basketball Association of America and the fledgling National Basketball Association for such teams as Cleveland, Denver, Boston, and Baltimore, with a career total of 3,480 points in 276 games; honors include selection as one of 100 greatest players of the first century of basketball by Basketball Alumni Foundation in 1991. Consult Life, January 21, 1946, p. 85 and Biographical Dictionary of American Sports: 1992-95 Supplement for Baseball, Football, Basketball and Other Sports (Greenwood Press, 1995) 297-298 and John Christgau, The Origins of the Jump Shot: Eight Men Who Shook the World of Basketball (University of Nebraska Press, 1999) 187-214 and Sunday /Omaha/ World Herald, June 1, 2003, p. C-5.

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