Then, after a hard dribble forward with his right hand, he snatched the ball back with the quickness of a kid trying to capture a firefly with his opposite hand, placing himself in the middle of the floor for a midrange jumper. Allen appeared as if he was entering No Man’s Land, setting himself up to be trapped down low. With 13:04 left to play, Allen nonchalantly brought the ball up the floor and dribbled toward the right corner with the Gators’ Craig Brown defending him. 11-seed Penn Quakers were in the second round of the 1994 NCAA Tournament, taking on a 3-seed in Florida. I was just standing there watching, floored.” I heard a kid say, ‘Oooo, he just hit you with the Pooh Allen.’ I was standing right there. There were some little kids playing on a court. So, I’m coming home, and two days after we play Dream Team II, I’m at a Summer League game on 16th Street. “We didn’t have Twitter, we didn’t have Instagram. “By the time I got home, after that game, it went crazy,” said Allen, now an assistant coach with the Detroit Pistons.
Johnson reacted like he had been hit with a jab from Zab Judah. The crowd reacted like it had seen something it had never seen before. Allen tossed the ball out with his left hand, snatched it back with his right and hit Johnson with another crossover before driving to the basket. Bronze medals in hand, the team made a stop in California to take on Dream Team II at the Oakland Coliseum as Reggie Miller, Shaquille O’Neal and others prepared for the upcoming World Championships.Īt one point during that game, Allen was one-one-one at the top of the key with NBA star Kevin Johnson. Petersburg, Russia, with a collection of other college players - including Tim Duncan, Shawn Respert and Damon Stoudamire. It was the summer before his junior year of college and the Penn guard had just participated in the Goodwill Games in St.
“If you know Pooh, if you know Jerome Allen,” Rozier said, “you know he’s going around showing people that clip.”Īllen first performed the move on a big stage in 1993, on TNT. During six seasons as a Boston Celtics assistant coach, Allen would occasionally break out the proof that he did the Shammgod before Shammgod himself made it big. But the truth is more complicated than that. The Shammgod is actually Jerome’s, Eskin would say. Since then, countless basketball fans have done likewise, struck by the combination of creativity, skill and guts needed to execute the sleight-of-hand trick at top speed.Īs the move became more and more famous in the years to come, emerging as a piece of basketball folklore, Eskin would try to set the record straight. Whenever the tape showed Allen’s move, they would break out screaming. They watched it over and over, marveling at the way Jerome “Pooh” Allen befuddled his defender in a Team USA scrimmage vs. In a Germantown, Penn., basement, years before Shammgod unleashed the move in the 1997 NCAA tournament, Spike Eskin and his friends would pop in a tape showing a different player using the same ballhandling maneuver. But what if you were told of a debate between two East Coast cities about the dribble’s birth? What if you learned another hooper shares a claim to the move’s history, one whose role in its genesis has rarely been talked about over the decades? He’s long been credited with both its creation and popularization. It’s named after God Shammgod, the legendary Brooklyn dribbler whose cultural impact on the sport reaches far beyond this single trick of the basketball. The 100th time you see it is no less thrilling than the first. It’s a moment that jolts anyone watching to attention. In another, the ball has seemingly teleported, as if controlled through supernatural ability, but instead with the utmost precision dictated from the player in control. In one moment the ballhandler is moving with comforting familiarity, crossing over like millions have before.
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