John Miller Cooper, who died last year at 98, once described his historic basketball innovation this way: “My feet left the hardcourt surface, and it felt good. It was free and natural, and I knew I had discovered something.”

Cooper was talking about a game in 1931, and he described what may be the first jump shot attempted at a high level of college basketball.

Or maybe not. Several players claim to have introduced or popularized the shot. Finding the origin of the jump shot in basketball is like an archaeological dig worthy of a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” sequel, including characters with names like Tennessee Slim, the Great Finnegan from North Dakota, Belus Van Smawley of North Carolina and a Hawaiian player known as Itsu. The story has subplots that bring to mind a certain New York parochialism, the pursuit of individualism and the quest to be noticed in the South and the West.

Who fired the first jump shot and when? It was certainly many decades before the first N.C.A.A. tournament office pool. It was before national tournaments of any kind, when basketball was played in dingy gyms and isolated dirt-floor barns. But without the invention of the jump shot, the game today might not be a mainstream international sport.