Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:
"Alley-Oop" appears to have originated from the French term, "Allez Hop." "Allez Hop" is the "cry" made prior to the jumping of an acrobat in a circus (1) . "Alley-Oop" was used in the NFL during the 1950s with respect to the San Francisco 49ers, describing an arching pass in which taller receivers caught the ball over smaller defenders (1) . Though its origins were not etched in basketball, basketball adopted this term and is used today to describe a basketball player making a basket while catching the ball in mid-air (2) .
Full answer by user527: https://sports.stackexchange.com/a/16264 (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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