“Shooting Homework: Watch the NBA Three-Point Shooting Contest!”

One way to improve your basketball skills, and in this case, your basketball shooting skills, is to watch what the great players do and how they do it. The NBA All-Star weekend and game have nothing to do with basketball, far as I can tell, save the piling-on promotional aspect, except, EXCEPT the Three-Point Shooting Contest. There the players have to shoot the ball (under pressure, time pressure) like you have to shoot the ball in a game. Well, in a game, I guess you don’t have a rack right next to you and you do have a little more time after each shot to do something like follow-through, but the participants still have to employ good fundamentals to have success. Those fundamentals are what you as a player who wants to improve your shot should look for.

After grabbing the ball off the rack, does the player do anything to achieve good balance? Balance being critical; you can’t be leaning left, you can’t be leaning right. Is there a small one-two step? A tiny hop to adjust feet? How do they get the ball to their “shot pocket”? That spot that aligns elbow under hand, hand under ball? Do some players have the left (or off) elbow up higher than others? Do all the players have elbow-in, or are some getting away with it out? Is the head still on release? Where is the release point? In front of the middle of the head? Out to the side more? (Two-eyed shooter?) How about the extension of the shooting arm? Does it go straight out to 180 degrees? Just less? What about the follow-through? Is it consistent among all the shooters? What is the off-hand doing, and the off-arm? Does that off-hand flick out? (Bird, Kerr, Szczerbiak.) Or does it stay stone still, left hand fingers pointing straight up after the release?

Shooters can shoot the ball different ways and have success. The key is to find the common elements among all great shooters and try to incorporate those elements into who you are as a shooter and into what your shot is already like.

Now, I gotta go buy one of those racks, actually five of them, right? Five red, white and blue balls, too. (The other twenty are in the back of the station wagon). Get ready for next year.

Technorati Tags: Three-PointShooting, All-StarGame, SteveKerr

“See the Front Rim”

When shooting, focus, really concentrate your vision, on the front of the rim. Don’t just look generally at the area of the hoop. See the front of the rim and imagine shooting the ball over the rim. Remember, the target is actually air, that slice of air that occupies the area of the circle encompassed by the round rim. To get to the target, you have to shoot “up” and have the ball come down through. When releasing, follow through intentionally with your shooting hand, wrist snapping at the basket. Given good balance with your feet, the ball will go where your hand sends it, so be aware of what your hand does on the release.

“Ready to Shoot”

(This is the sort of thing that college players work on all the time.) When considering getting a shot off (without getting it blocked), shooters often think about (and ask me about) jumping over defenders, a “quick release” and other difficult-to-achieve, nebulous approaches. True, one hopes to be unfettered when shooting; you want separation - space - between you and the defender. However, the best way to accomplish this is to be ready to shoot, ready to shoot a quality shot. This is accomplished by being as far into the process of catching-and-shooting as is possible. I remember being almost reduced to tears watching Bird just catch and flick from the corner against Arkansas in the NCAA Regional Final in 1979. His hands were already up for the catch, his knees were bent for the jump, and he was squared to the hoop for accuracy. That guy was ready to shoot, and you can be too, if you prepare to shoot before you catch the ball. Once again: hands up (palms showing), knees bent so you don’t have to take the time to do that after catching, and pivot to square up while catching so you can eliminate time and motion on your shot. Hopefully, the tears shed watching you will be tears of admiration, as well.

“Jump Shooting”

Jump. Shot. That’s pretty much how it works: jump, shot. First you jump and then you shoot. Jumping is by itself a fun and healthful kind of thing to do (we think), sort of like sprinting. I mean why jog all the time, why not sprint? “Honey, I’ll be back in 30 seconds, I’m going out for a sprint.” But we digress. Here’s how you practice learning a jump shot: get as close as you can to the hoop, on a 45 degree angle to the hoop, take one step and, jumping, bring the ball as close to the backboard as you can get it, actually try to touch the board with the ball, extending your forearm/elbow/upperarm slightly past 90 degrees. When the ball is as close to the board as it’s going to get, flick your wrist and allow your arm to nearly fully extend (relaxedly), letting the ball release with a smooth and consistent backspin, thus assuring a safe landing (of sorts) for the ball and a certain two points! Gradually back up. Use the middle of the lane, shooting over the front of the rim, too. Jump. Shot. Shoot at or just before the peak of your jump. Use your legs and the energy of the jump for strength and range. The only other thing to think about is how you are going to react when someone says to you, perhaps for the first time, “Nice jumper!”

“The Simple Layup”

“The point is, don’t shoot layups the same way every time. In general, get up as high as you can, and keep your eye on the target. I tell my players to shoot different kinds of layups each day so that their shots and the movement of their legs don’t become stereotyped. If you jump each time you practice them, you’ll strengthen your legs. If you practice layups casually, you’ll shoot them casually in the game”.

pp. 54-55 "The Smart Take From the Strong"by Pete Carril, former Princeton University head coach and legend

“The Reverse Mikan Drill”

It being the birth date of our tallest president, we think of four score and seven not as a number of years, but the potential number of points that our gangly #16, the 6’6” orator, could have picked up in the post had he practiced this move. Part of the success of playing in the post is practicing a variety of ways of finishing shots from a host of angles. The Reverse Mikan teaches you to put the ball in the basket when approaching from behind the backboard, that slim four foot area between the hoop (backboard) and the baseline. Start with your back to the baseline directly behind the rim, take a step with your left foot angling out to your right and spin the ball (slightly) off the backboard finishing with your right hand pinky in the air pointing up. Take the ball out of the net, step with your right foot angling out to the left and spin the ball with your left hand, shooting again with a slight spin, pinky pointing up. Again off the backboard. Shot five score, try to make, oh, eighty-seven.

“The Mikan Drill”

George Mikan died in early June of this year. I never met him, as far as I know never was even in the same room or gym with him (maybe at an NABC dinner at a Final Four). By all accounts, he was a decent, fun-loving, hard-working, very tall man…a very tall man who is memorialized by not only his Hall of Fame status but by a drill named for him. For the past fifty years, every budding player everywhere on the basketball planet has practiced the Mikan Drill. It is a drill designed to help the player become adept at shooting a short half-hook with either hand while jumping off the correct foot near the basket. The rhythm and comfort and confidence of ambidexterity near the hoop.

Starting just beyond the front of the rim in the center of the lane, step to the right with your left foot, jump, driving your right knee into the air. While jumping, hold the ball comfortably with two hands bringing it up your right side, on an angle away from your right hip, as if to keep it away from your left shoulder. Shoot a half-hook off the backboard. Wait for the ball to nestle through the net, then step with your right foot, jump, driving your left knee up and shoot the lefty half-hook off the backboard on the left side of the hoop. Wait for the ball to nestle through and repeat on the right side. Do a hundred in a row. Don’t dribble. Don’t repeat if you miss a shot, just go to the other side. See if you can make ten in a row without hitting rim.

George Mikan, the next hundred makes are for you.

“The Great Ones Use the Glass”

When Tom Thibodeau, who is now an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics (their “defensive guru”, no less) and who has been in ‘The League’ for sixteen years, was an assistant with me at Harvard and we used to play pick-up ball at the old IAB (now the Malkin Athletic Center) at lunchtime, he would occasionally say something interesting or something that stuck in my head for a long time. One of those sayings was “the great ones use the glass”. This was, of course, usually uttered after he banked one in. Yes, it was funny, but it was also worth thinking about and learning from. There is something sweet (and useful) about watching the ball glance and change direction into the hoop. Another thing to understand is the backboard is your friend. If your touch is feeling a little suspect, get yourself on that angle that is probably 30-35 degrees off the baseline (coaches who say 45 degrees need to dust off their protractors), the line that puts the “block” directly between you and “the box” on the backboard, and bank it in. After you knock it home, backpedal down the court, follow through hand still up in the air and declare (with NBA-like authority) “the great ones use the glass”.