Regardless, the spark of excitement each time swish appears might explain why word is still around today.New Post Game Thread Nikola Jokic dominates the 2023 NBA Finals and earns Finals MVP, averaging 30.2/14/7.2 for the series and the Denver Nuggets are NBA Champions! Top Team Subreddit PostsĢ Hello Knicks Fans! Not one myself, but I am making an ANIMATION of my Favorite Players from every team! I think I had my answer from the start, but I did consider guys like Patrick Ewing, John Starks, and even Nate Robinson, but I could not put any of them over this guy. The scarcity of the word makes it easy to weigh the options. Ultimately, it’s a reader’s choice about which use of swish was mere description and which was the distinctive exclamation we know today. Part technological phenomenon (thanks to those fabric cords), part purple prose (swish rolled off the tongue), and part luck, swish became synonymous with the perfect shot. The swish quickly became a common way to punch up a routine article about a game. The swish goes mainstreamīy the 1930s, basketball was becoming more mainstream and, as importantly, it was capturing copy in the sports pages. Oberlin alumni read about a swish in 1923, OSU alums in 1926, and U Penn students read about another student who failed to swish the ball in 1926. In 1923, The Wisconsin Engineer exclaimed “Swish!” when covering an exciting game. The full copy praised Edelstein for his foul-shooting skills, and the reporter noted that only in four shots did he “fail to send the ball swishing through the basket for a point.” That florid turn of phrase made Edelstein the first to swish.Ĭollege players were next (though in 1918, a recreational game had a player who swished the ball as well). The piece included a narrative of the first game, and that’s where a young right forward (sic) named George Edelstein got a chance to shine. It was one of the first long pieces about a high school team, and there was more copy as a result. On February 4th, 1917, the New York Tribune profiled The Bushwick Five, a scrappy Brooklyn team from Bushwick High School. Fiction and Boys’ Life make basketball exciting But the word was gaining steam, with the help of the sport’s young fans. After his pioneering mention of a clear swish, there was a dry spell in print. Yarrum’s college journal story didn’t set the world on fire, however. A swish of netting resounded as the ball dropped through the goal without touching the iron rim.” Yarrum writes: “The ball described a half ellipse in mid-air and descended straight for the basket. In Trebor Yarrum’s 1913 story The Coward, he chronicled a sad-sack named Dempsey Darden who watched Moseley win a basketball game. It makes sense that fiction writers and college students would develop the word first, because they were close to the game and free to use purple prose. “A swish of netting resounded as the ball dropped…” The only issue? He was a fictional character. So who got the first recorded swish? It may have been a sophomore named Moseley in 1913. The first swisher may have been imaginary But basketball eventually got its chance. Baseball and boxing were the two biggest sports, so they received the florid copy that basketball hadn’t earned yet. Sportswriters happily described the swish of a baseball bat (through the wind, we’d guess) or even the swish of a boxer’s glove. Basketball lacked serious college competitions, didn’t have a professional league, and was primarily seen as a diversion. However, their swishing didn’t describe basketball, even after the 1912 debut of fabric nets. Sportswriting from the 1910s is filled with colorful phrasing and a lot of flowery language, including swishing. And it took a little longer for the term to appear in print. That’s right-basketball went almost 20 years before the first swish was ever heard. It wasn’t until 1912 that open-ended fabric nets were approved for use in recreational, high school, and college games. The nets were metal and usually closed at the end, so players had to fish out the ball after each basket. When Naismith and others began using nets and rims in 1893, they still didn’t hear the swish. As we all know, there’s no swish in a closed basket. James Naismith famously invented basketball in 1891, but it was called basket ball for a reason-peach baskets served as the hoops. But it hasn’t always been that way-there was a first swish, and it’s possible to find it. The two words are bound together, and swish manages to be both poetic and bluntly descriptive-it’s onomatopoeia that every broadcaster or writer can use. Swish and basketball have a bond that other sports envy.
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