Shooting gets more complicated every year; not the actual shooting, but the over-analysis and information saturating the marketplace. Through training hundreds of players and listening to their preconceptions, I formulated my five biggest fake fundamentals of shooting a basketball.

Bend your knees. Shooters start in an athletic position; however, any time a shooter misses short, the coach screams “bend your knees.” More often than not, the degree of knee bend is not the problem. Many times, the problem is the manner in which the athlete bends or the explosiveness of the ankle, knee and hip extension. I trained a player who bent his knees more and more as his coach told him. He did not bend correctly, and every time he bent further down, he was more and more off-balance. Shooters do not need to bend their knees until their thigh is parallel to the ground; instead, they need to bend back and down, creating better balance, and then explode up as part of their shot. It is the balance and rapid extension many players lack, not the knee bend.

Finish with your “hand in the cookie jar.” When I was young, coaches taught me to finish my shot with my “hand in the cookie jar.” This is unnecessary; when players visualize the “hand in the cookie jar,” they close their hand with fingers together, as though grabbing a cookie. Instead, players should keep their hand open and relaxed through the whole shot, which imparts more force on the ball and keeps the ball directed at the target better. Rather than put your “hand in the cookie jar,” shoot “out of a telephone booth,” so the motion goes up and then out.

Let the ball roll off the fingers. When the ball “rolls off the fingers,” it exits the hand weakly. Instead, shoot your hand all the way through the ball. When the ball leaves the hand, the hand should push up and through the ball.

Shoot at the top of the jump. When players shoot at the top of their jump, they waste the energy created by the jump. Rather than imparting the energy and force into the shot, they shoot with the upper body and push the ball. A shot taken at the top of the jump is like stepping onto a step and shooting without bending your legs or jumping. Shooting at the top of the jump simply means shooting from a higher release point; it also means shooting entirely with the upper body. When close to the basket, this is advantageous, as the height of the release is more important than the force. However, when shooting an outside jump shot, the power is more important than the height of the release; shoot “early in the jump” or “on the way up” to maximize the force generated.

Put your middle finger in the center of the ball. It seems logical to put your middle finger in the middle of the ball, but centering your index finger helps with the alignment of the ball, hand and elbow. The proper alignment increases the ease of shooting straight through the ball as opposed to shooting with some unnecessary movement.

In an article about the upcoming draft, an NBA scout said:

I’ll never forget Ray Allen telling a story. You have no idea how hard it is to attempt 20 shots in a game. Try to get 20 quality shots? It’s impossible, no way. When you are the featured player, you are defended differently. Your goal in a game should be getting something he called “free looks” on wide-open shots, and make six of them, knowing that the other 12 are going to be contested, and they are so fucking hard to make. You might go fucking 3-for-12 or 4-for-12, but if you go 6-for-8? OK, now you are 9-for-20 or 10-for-20, and you’re whole again. So, on the night, you are 3-8 on your free looks and then 3-for-12 on your contested ones, then you have those fucking horrible shooting nights.

Obviously few players are the featured shooters against NBA defenses. However, the concept holds true at every level: The best players, and increasingly the best shooters, struggle to get wide open shots like the ones that they practice. One answer is to rely on other players to make open shots, but, in a sense, the defense wins in that situation too. Players have to be prepared to take and make shots that are more complex, and more difficult, than the average practice shot. As I wrote earlier this week about Stephen Curry, when you practice one specific release, rather than experimenting, you are limited. Players need a greater variability in their practice because no two shots are the same, and a great shooter is going to be scouted and well-defended and have to work harder to take good shots.

Originally published in Los Angeles Sports & Fitness, May/June 2016

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