The early stages of Derrick Rose's much-discussed rehabilitation from a torn left ACL called for a steady diet of jump shots. Before his knee was ready for running and jumping, that was the only way for him to play basketball. The upside is that when the Bulls' 24-year-old All-Star point guard does eventually return to play, he'll have a much-improved jump shot and a better three-ball.

At least that's the prevailing assumption among many observers, from color commentators to Rose's Bulls teammate Rip Hamilton to former NBA star Tim Hardaway, who tore his ACL in 1993. At around the time that Rose's trainer cleared him to begin shooting last summer, Hardaway spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times:

He can only do three things. He can dribble — not run and dribble, just dribble walking up and down the court; he can shoot a bunch of free throws; and he can shoot a bunch of set shots like he's playing H-O-R-S-E every day, all day... If you shoot 1,000 jump shots a day, 1,000 free throws a day, you're going to get better.

Hardaway's three-point percentage improved from .334 in the two seasons before his injury to .378 his first year back. Rip Hamilton told the Sun-Times he expects a similar jump for Rose. And the Bulls point guard is only the latest in a long line of incapacitated ballers said to be honing their shooting aim while laid up. When Ricky Rubio, for example, returned from an injury similar to Rose's, the Minnesota Star-Tribune noted he'd "worked on his shooting touch for many of those nine months away when he could do little other than rehabilitation with that surgically repaired left knee."

But there isn't a lot of material out there documenting improved post-ACL jump shots after the fact, and Hardaway's improvement was fairly modest. Is the ACL Rehab Jumper Effect a real phenomenon, or just spin and optimistic coach-speak? I took a look at that question with help from Basketball Reference's bottomless well of statistics and an assist from Basketball Prospectus writer Dan Feldman.

We used Basketball Reference's definition of a jumper as any shot taken when a player jumps and releases the ball mid-air — basically any attempt, short or long, that's not a tip, hook, lay-up, or dunk. Of the roughly 35 players who have suffered ACL tears since the start of the 2000–2001 season, 15 qualified for consideration (for this study) by virtue of having played at least 600 minutes in the season prior to injury and 600-plus minutes in one of two seasons following the year the injury occurred. The rest didn't play enough for their numbers to have much meaning.

Here's how they fared.