It was not that long ago when the accepted wisdom in football was that the running game had to be established — that was always the obligatory verb: established — before passes could become effective. My, we know how that has changed. Now the pass is established from the get-go, and running is an afterthought.

Well, I think it is certified now that basketball has experienced the same sort of offensive sea change. At all levels — with men and women — the 3-point shot has utterly transformed the way the game is played. More and more, the players are spread out, looking to pop behind the 3-point arc. More and more teams are, in the vernacular, “going small,” with only one big man down deep. Good grief, the position of power forward is in the process of going the way of short shorts.

Click the audio to hear Frank Deford’s full 2 cents on the 3-point shot.

Standing at the foot of Mount Wachusett’s slopes, Ray Jackman bends over and hoists Robbie McAllister out of his wheelchair and onto two neon yellow skis.

The teenager squeezes into a thick plastic seat mounted just above the skis.

“OK, there are a bunch of straps,” says Jackman as he buckles the crisscrossing seatbelts.

Jackman is a program coordinator at the Massachusetts Hospital School, a state-run facility. It’s half school, half pediatric hospital, and all 85 students are patients, with serious, long-term conditions.

That doesn’t keep them from activities kids at other schools do: like skiing. Today, Jackman is out with the ski team, and his buddy for the day is McAllister.

Adaptive skiing equipment makes it possible for students with illness or disability to hit the slopes. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

toggle caption LA Johnson/NPR

The 19-year-old has cerebral palsy, which means he has minimal control over his muscles.

That doesn’t worry Jackman. Twenty years ago, he quit his job as a mortgage banker, got rid of all his suits and ties, and started working full-time helping kids with limited mobility find ways to play highly mobile sports.

“Let’s fly down that mountain at 100 mph. I want to pass that able-bodied person,” Jackman tells his student.

And their day goes a lot like most skiing trips. There are just a few extra steps.

At the base of the chair lift, Jackman and a volunteer lift McAllister and his seat onto the chair lift.

On the way up, it’s typical field-trip chitchat — “Would you rather be skiing or in school?” Jackman asks.

The answer? “Skiing!”

They talk about serious stuff, too. Jackman acknowledges that it takes a lot for McAllister to leave his electric wheelchair — his comfort zone. “You have a lot of trust in me and I appreciate that,” Jackman says.

At the top, they scoot off the chairlift to a panoramic view of evergreens and brushed snow.

Jackman gets to work arranging two tether lines. He will ski about 6 feet behind McAllister, giving him a tug in the right direction and acting as the student’s brakes — it’s a type of adaptive skiing.

“Are we ready?” Jackman screams into the wind. “Yeah!”

And off they go. “Let’s go over those little jumps,” Jackman responds as they start to harness the pull of the slope and gravity. McAllister’s guttural screams, filled with excitement and terror, echo across the slopes as they speed past all the other skiers.

At the bottom, McAllister is beaming. “He wanted more, more, more,” his coach says. “I think I heard: ‘Faster!’ “

Several runs later, they head inside to warm up.

Back in their wheelchairs, the three students on this trip sit by the fireplace, eating warm chili and sipping hot chocolate.

Jackman says this is the school’s riskiest sport, surpassing wheelchair football, swimming and horseback riding.

Yet, he adds, it’s worth it. He notes that this is basically work they could do in a clinic, just not in a clinical setting. On the slopes, the students are using skills they’ve learned in physical therapy, speech therapy and occupation therapy.

The kids are engaging in different exercises, but it’s done without measuring whether the kid looked 45 degrees this way or lifted 10 pounds that way.

Instead, Jackman says, “I only measure it through a smile.”

Reigning NBA MVP Steph Curry is destroying the league with the kind of shooting we’ve never seen before. NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks to Mike Wang, gameplay director of the video game “NBA 2K,” and John Fontanella, author of The Physics of Basketball, about Curry’s shooting game.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The Golden State Warriors are trying to break the NBA record for wins in a single season. Meanwhile, the Warrior’s star, Stephen Curry, is pretty much breaking the NBA.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Curry way downtown – bang, oh, what a shot from Curry with six-tenths of a second remaining.

(CHEERING)

SHAPIRO: That’s Curry making a game-winning three-pointer against Oklahoma City on Saturday, and he took that shot 38 feet away from the net. John Fontanella is a retired physics professor from the Naval Academy, and he wrote the book “The Physics Of Basketball.” Welcome to the show.

JOHN FONTANELLA: Thank you, Ari.

SHAPIRO: That single shot we just heard is pretty remarkable on its own. But Curry has been making these kinds of shots all the time. How extraordinary is this?

FONTANELLA: Oh, he’s really amazing – friend of mine says that’s revolutionary. I really think it’s probably more evolutionary, but he’s a very impressive young man.

SHAPIRO: Why do you see him as an evolutionary figure rather than a revolutionary one?

FONTANELLA: Because there’s nothing really new that he’s doing. It’s that he’s doing it better. What he does has its origins back in the ’50s with something called the set shot. The classic jumpshot – the ball is released from the top of your head. Well, he’s just eliminated that step. The real starting point is at the chest, and it just goes there, straight from the chest to the basket.

SHAPIRO: And that lets him make the shot a lot faster than other players used to.

FONTANELLA: Exactly. He is much, much – he’s the quickest release that I’ve ever seen.

SHAPIRO: Steph Curry is so good that he’s created havoc for the makers of some video games. Mike Wang is gameplay director of “NBA 2K.” It’s a game that prides itself on being realistic.

MIKE WANG: You know, in real life, you’ve got to take good shots. You’ve got to take high-quality shots. You got to be open. You know, with Steph, he’s, like – he could throw those things out the window and go off the dribble, (unintelligible) for 10 seconds, shoot in double teams with two guys draped all over him and still hit the shot. So that’s something that we need to go back to the drawing board and see if we can get that back into our game.

SHAPIRO: Well, yeah. I was going to ask what does this mean for you now that he’s rewriting the rulebooks in real life.

WANG: Well, it’s going to spend some time. It’s – he’s – kept throwing a wrench into the system. You know, we had a lot of rules and things in our game that kind of make it so that we balance the game out.

SHAPIRO: If you change the virtual Steph Curry to be more like the real Steph Curry, isn’t everybody playing your game just going to want to be the Warriors?

WANG: You know, it’s not a bad choice, though (laughter), you know? Everyone wants to be the Warriors already. And why would you not want to be the best? I mean, they’re, you know, on pace to be the most winningest team in the league history. I think it’s going to happen regardless.

SHAPIRO: You have, obviously, a professional stake in this. This is your job. But I assume you also have a personal interest in basketball. What was it like for you watching that shot on Saturday?

WANG: Oh, it was amazing. I was sitting at home with my wife. And you know, I was – I think it was at one point when they were down toward the end, we were both like, you know, it’s not over yet. You know, it’s awesome watching the Warriors. You never know what you’re going to get, especially from Steph. He can shoot from anywhere. He can shoot the shots that no one expects to go in, and he hits them with – on a regular basis, and that’s just exciting for the league and exciting for us as fans.

SHAPIRO: That was Mike Wang, gameplay director of NBA 2K. We also heard from John Fontanella, author of “The Physics of Basketball.”

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