I texted a former player after she struggled in a game. She said that her coach yelled at her about her missed shots. Do coaches think players miss shots on purpose? Now, if players take bad shots or are selfish or something else, I understand (well, not really the yelling, but at least a conversation), but how does yelling at a player because she missed shots help her to make the next one? And, if the goal of yelling is not to help the player make the next shot, what is the purpose of the yelling? To make the coach feel better? To make sure that players know the goal is to make shots?

I sent a link to an article from the summer — “Shooting Percentages: A Lesson in Small Numbers“, and jokingly asked if I should send the article to her coach. She read the article, as I hoped she would. One bad game is a bad game; follow up the bad game with a good game, and one’s percentages start to return to the expected. In light of her experience, this part seems apropos:

My former player responded to a different section:

It makes so much sense. This was a major aspect of Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide. More and more, what we see as development or improvement at the college or even NBA levels often is a greater role and enhanced confidence: More opportunity, more shots, more freedom to play through mistakes. The improvement is a result of the coach trusting the player, or, at least, players feeling as though their coach trusts them.

In shooting, we focus on the foundation of one’s shot; the feet or balance that enable the rest of the shot to unfold properly. In reality, we may need to think of this trust as the foundation of players’ shooting, as when players feel as though their coach does not trust them, they will never maximize their shooting.

A former player started the season shooting poorly on a high volume of attempts. She played a lot of minutes and attempted a lot of shots, so I ruled out the coach impacting her shooting (another player said she was struggling because the coach subs every 2 minutes, so she never gets into a rhythm).

As we texted back and forth, the player said she just needed to get in the gym and practice more. I asked about an injury, and she said that she was rehabbing every day. I offered to look at her shots and see if I saw anything.

As I expected, she appears to favor her injury slightly. However, she rushed most of her shots despite being relatively open.

I asked about their shooting practice. She said they don’t really practice shooting, but when they do, they never have defenders.

I attribute her struggles to two changes since she played for me; first, her injury, which certainly has an effect; and second, the change in shooting practice.

I advised her to spend more time on her rehab and offered a few ideas to supplement the normal off court rehab.

Next, I suggested that she needed to find a way to practice with defenders closing out. She said that her coach took her out of the game because she passed up a open shot, but she did not feel that she was open. These feelings, this sense of openness must be practiced. Simply shooting in a gym by oneself will not enhance the decision-making aspect of shooting or the acclimation to defense.

Good shooters will never be left alone completely; there is always a defender present. The question is the defender’s distance and speed, and the space that the shooter needs to feel open or un-rushed. When shooters practice with defenders, they improve their ability to calibrate the time and space and make better decisions. They identify open shots more quickly and accurately, and consequently defensive pressure has less of an effect.

These skills cannot be trained in isolation. The solution is not more reps, but different reps.

Imagine coaching a player who shot 33% from the 3-point line last season and you are offered a choice: Shoot 80% in practice and improve to 35% in games or shoot 50% in practice and improve to 39% in games. Which do you choose?

The choice appears obvious. Everything else being equal, you prefer the player who shoots the higher percentage during games. However, what if you are a private coach and not associated with the player’s team? Does that change your methods?

Melo has the offseason record of 88/100 shooting in the Black Ops Basketball 100 drill 🔥

(via IG / @Cbrickley603) pic.twitter.com/wxvtZzqQoK— Dime (@DimeUPROXX) November 5, 2020

Continually, on social media, private shooting coaches post videos such as the one above and brag about the player’s practice shooting percentages. Carmelo Anthony is a career 35% 3-pt shooter whose percentages peaked during the 2013-14 season at 40% (via Basketball Reference). Carmelo worked out in our gym in the summer of 2017, and his workout was very much like the video above: No defense, relatively slow, blocks of shooting.

If players continually shoot >80% in workouts, and 35% in games, why engage in the same practice? Why not try other practice? (First, I imagine that Carmelo engages in some real practice that does not make it onto Instagram and Twitter. Second, part of training NBA players, and retaining clients, is often about doing what the player wants to do, so this may be more theoretical, or only applicable to amateur players where the coach/trainer has a little more control/authority).

Head coaches are evaluated by won-loss records. Ultimately, the coach does not care what the practice looks like as long as the player shoots well during games, as higher shooting percentages lead to more wins.

Private coaches are evaluated differently. These videos are marketing for their brands, not instructional videos. The private coach has no control over the game shooting percentages. The private coach can illustrate the player’s successful shooting in private sessions, and demonstrate that the private coach has done his job: See, he shoots very well and almost never misses.

The head coach is ultimately responsible for all aspects of performance. If a player’s shooting percentage falls, is it due to confidence? fatigue? shot selection? poor play design/lack of open shots? poor passes from teammates? technique? practice design? Regardless of the cause, the head coach is ultimately responsible. The head coach cannot blame practice design for the player’s shooting percentages because he designs the practice; the head coach cannot blame a stagnant offense or lack of open shots because he calls the plays; the head coach cannot blame fatigue because he distributes the minutes. Any explanation falls under the purview of the head coach, unless the head coach decides to throw the player under the bus and blame poor shot selection, selfishness, poor practice habits, etc.

Now, the private coach is really only responsible, as much as anyone is responsible for another person, for two things: offseason practice design and possibly technique. When the private coach posts these videos of 80-90% shooting, he demonstrates that there are no technique issues. Also, because he shoots so well, practice must be effective. After all, the goal is to make shots, and he makes shots. The problem, therefore, is not with the private coach or the offseason practice.

Instead, a private coach (and not implying this about this coach, but I see others on social media and have known others in real life) can blame the head coach for how the player is used or the shots that are created for the player or playing time or whatever. The private coach avoids blame, and in the process, markets himself to other clients.

The point, of course, is that practice is not a marketing opportunity, and practice improvement and performance does not matter unless it transfers to game performance. We measure practice’s success with game results.

Too many coaches, private and team coaches, organize practice for an audience, not for game results. They focus on made shots, not transferable practice. They strive for efficiency, not effectiveness.

At minimum, a game-like shot requires a passing option and a defender. Defense affects shooting; the decision to shoot affects shooting percentages. Drills missing these components have limited transfer to game performance, as evidenced by the precipitous drop in percentages from practice to games.

At the beginning, I imagine most coaches answered that they would accept lower shooting percentages in practice if it led to better shooting percentages in games. However, if that is true, why do so many shooting coaches and head coaches organize shooting drills to maximize practice shooting percentages, not to improve game shooting percentages?

For more along these lines, check out Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide, which is largely inspired by the above situation.

Crowder is gonna get a bag off his bubble play.

— Nate Jones (@JonesOnTheNBA) September 16, 2020

Jae Crowder contributes many things to a basketball team, but I believe Nate Jones was referring primarily to his shooting during the playoffs, as not much else changed about his play (except possibly exposure, moving from Memphis to Miami).

As I write this, on 9/24, Jae Crowder is a very respectable 41/111 from the 3-point line in the playoffs; 36.9% is slightly higher than the average 3-point shooting percentage during the regular season, and I imagine that 3-point shooting percentages fall during the NBA playoffs due to scouting and increased defensive intensity (although I did not check average NBA playoff 3-point shooting percentages).

However, when Nate, who is one of the smartest individuals around the NBA, tweeted the above, Crowder was 35/84 or 41.7% from the 3-point line. In the 3 games since the tweet, Crowder has shot 6/27 (3/10, 2/10, 1/7) or 22.2% from the 3-point line.

Our perceptions are shaped by narratives, and these narratives often are shaped by snapshots. Currently, Crowder is shooting above the average 3-point percentage, and he started out the playoffs blazing hot, which created a narrative about his shooting. Earlier, Nate tweeted:

Heat shooting coaches gonna have Crowder collecting another bag.

— Nate Jones (@JonesOnTheNBA) September 6, 2020

Imagine if the playoffs had ended before Crowder’s last 3 games.

Jae Crowder shot 45% on 128 shots during the season and is shooting 42% on 84 shots in the postseason. That’s over 200 shots. Something to consider: Is he getting more open looks than years past and has he changed his form at all? https://t.co/CujQvqV2kp

— Willie Beamen (@joshbaum33) September 17, 2020

Jae Crowder is 6th in the NBA with 3.5 3PM per game in the playoffs.

He’s also shooting 42%.

— Clay Ferraro (@ClayWPLG) September 16, 2020

If a General Manager is deciding whether to sign Crowder or determining the salary to offer, those are compelling numbers. Is 200 shots enough to suggest that he made some changes that elevated his shooting to a new level permanently? Is he simply improving his shot selection or getting better looks because of his teammates in Miami? Is this sustainable?

Now, imagine the narrative if Boston had swept the Heat, which was possible with their leads in every game. Isolate Crowder’s shooting in the 4 games against the Celtics, and he has shot 11/36 or 30.5%. When looking for a scapegoat after a sweep, some might point their fingers at his below-average 3-point shooting on a high volume of attempts, especially because he entered the series shooting 40% in the playoffs.

The offseason narrative certainly changes. Crowder is a career 34% 3-point shooter. The last images of Crowder would be a 3-game run of 20% 3-point shooting in a series loss. I imagine that GM would look at his shooting statistics more skeptically than if his playoff run ended 4 games earlier. Luckily for the Heat and Crowder’s back account, the Heat won 3 games and his season continues. He has more games that could create a new narrative. Did he have 3 bad games and then returned to his prior series averages as a 40% 3-point shooter or were these 3 games a regression to the mean, and the larger sample size is balancing a hot streak?

How does this change our perceptions of our players? Crowder has attempted 111 3-pointers in the playoffs; our highest volume 3-point shooter over the last 3 seasons was +/-178 3-pointers for a season. Two or three great or bad games affect shooting percentages greatly!

What if we looked at Crowder’s playoff run in reverse and he started with the last 3 games (22%), but then got hot and shot over 40% from the 3-point line over 11 games?

If that happened with a high-school or college team, would the player ever get to the hot streak? After the first 3 games (22%), would the coach bench him? Would the coach discourage him from shooting? Would he substitute for him when he misses? If these are the coach’s behaviors, would the player ever hit the hot streak? Would he regress to the mean (which in this case would be improving his shooting percentages from 22% to his career 34% through a hot streak)? Are 27 shots enough to determine whether or not a player is a shooter? Are 111 shots enough?

FWIW, Darryl Blackport found that it takes 750 3-point attempts for an NBA player’s shooting percentage to stabilize, which is more than most high-school or college players will attempt at that level in their careers.

EDIT: An update after the Heat defeated the Celtics. In the 2 games since I published this article, Crowder shot 0/6 and 1/5. He enters the NBA Finals shooting 34.4% (42/122) in the 2020 NBA Playoffs, which is slightly better than his career 3-point shooting percentage (34%).

Final Edit: Crowder shot 13/39 during the NBA Finals for 33.33%, slightly below his career average and his playoff average entering the Finals. For the 2020 NBA Playoffs, he finished 55/161 or 34.2%, nearly identical to his career three-point shooting percentage.

Summary

Hard work by Jae guided by Rob Fodor! Check him out, best in the business

— Waltese (@walterjohnIV) August 13, 2020

Did Crowder improve with the Heat? He shot better than he had to that point in the season with the Grizzlies, but was it improvement or regression to the mean?

If the Heat lost in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, where their seed said they should, Crowder likely would be able to demand more money in the offseason due to his hot shooting in the bubble to that point. One could argue that the Heat, a team known for its player development, and its shooting coach, one of the best in the business, improved Crowder’s shooting, and these changes led to better shooting that would continue into next season. Coaches might spend more time investigating the Heat staff to see the secrets that led to the improved shooting.

However, as the season concludes, that argument is tougher to make. Did Crowder forget the lessons that he learned initially and revert to form or is Crowder roughly a 34% three-point shooter? Should his next team expect the improved version of his shooting from the bubble games and the first two rounds of the playoffs? I would expect Crowder to make roughly 1 out of every 3 three-point field goal attempts once a large enough sample size is reached. However, we also see that Crowder is a high variance shooter: in 21 playoff games, he has 2 games where he shot between 31-35%; he had 4 games where he shot over 50%, and 5 games where he shot under 20%.

Crowder is one example, but how do coaches react when players have bad games? Do coaches tell a player to shoot less? Crowder’s fewest 3FGA in a game occurred in the game after he shot 57%. The game after his worst shooting night (0/6), he attempted 5 three-point field goals (1/5), which hardly suggests that he was told, explicitly or implicitly, not to shoot as much. However, coaches of younger players — and we might expect younger players to be high variance shooters like Crowder as opposed to incredibly consistent, regardless of shooting percentages — often explicitly tell players to shoot less or to attack the basket or to pass more when they have a bad game or when they are in the middle of a bad game.

Crazy how KNunn, Herro and DRob got the green light as rookies. That level of freedom only breeds more confidence to hoop. I seen dudes in shackles. Sometimes the best defense is your teammates and or coaches.

— Aj Diggs (@Jigga2cal) October 10, 2020

Maybe a large part of the Heat’s skill development is breeding confidence by giving players this freedom. Maybe this freedom increased Crowder’s shooting percentages initially. Maybe the lesson is not anything that the Heat did to Crowder’s shooting, but what they did to his mind or his confidence. Maybe the same happens when youth, high-school, and college coaches empower their players in the same way rather than overreacting to small numbers and high variance shots.

Since the Oklahoma City game on Saturday, the following segment with Kenny Smith critiquing Luguentz Dort’s shot has circulated on Twitter:

Kenny: His feet are pointing (to the left) and that means his shot will go left…
Dort’s Shot: misses to the right 🤦‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/eGo9a5WCsJ

— BBALLBREAKDOWN (@bballbreakdown) August 31, 2020

Kenny Smith is in such a hurry to tell the world how Dort should shoot that his observation is factually incorrect. He says that Dort will miss to the left because he turns his toes to the left, but the ball misses to the RIGHT. Of course, he does not allow the facts (objective results) to get in the way of his instruction.

There are two problems with this segment, and they illustrate larger problems with instruction throughout sports: (1) Coaches decide on a technique or system, and apply their ideas to ALL players regardless of the player or the player’s needs: They ignore the individual; (2) NBA players can never be wrong because they played in the NBA.

As I wrote in Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide, rarely do coaches work with a true beginner. Instead, every player has a history; they have practiced, received instructions, played, watched other players, and more. Every individual starts with different individual constraints: Strength, size, limb length, anatomy, etc. Consequently, not everyone will shoot the same.

In this segment, Kenny suggested that Dort, and really everyone, should shoot with 10 toes to the rim. As I wrote in Evolution, I do not have a specific shooting system: I am neither an advocate of 10 toes to the rim or of a turn. I advocate experimentation and what works for each individual player. Therefore, my point has nothing to do with this specific instruction, but in assuming this specific instruction is correct for all players. Simply watching any handful of elite shooters should be enough to see that no two shooters shoot exactly the same.

The objective is not to teach players to shoot a specific way using a specific system or technique, but to shoot better. Too often, an obsession with technique, perfection, instruction, and corrections causes us to lose sight of the actual goal: Making shots.

The second problem is that a non-NBA player cannot argue with an NBA player, even with objective facts, because NBA players resort to “I played in the NBA”. Therefore, poor teaching techniques (point toes to the rim, never cross your feet, never jump to pass, never jump to contest a shot, etc) often are perpetuated because of those who have the largest reach, like a nationally-televised audience.

The flaw with the argument is that Kenny Smith did not reach the NBA because of his knowledge of shooting or his shooting instruction: He reached the NBA due to a combination of factors including his speed, athleticism, decision-making, competitiveness, etc. This is not to suggest that NBA players are ignorant or only there because of athleticism. However, shooting a basketball, and teaching someone else to shoot a basketball, are two different skills that require different abilities and strengths. That should be obvious. How many elite players have struggled as coaches? They require different skills, abilities, personalities, etc. Being an expert at one thing does not make one an expert in another. In fact, according to Erik Dane of Rice University:

“Domain experts become ‘inflexible in thought and behavior,’ less able to ‘adapt to novel situations and to generate radically creative ideas within their domain.’” 

An expert, therefore, is less willing to adapt to the individual in front of him and seek novel ideas; instead he is inflexible, and believes his way to be the way.

I watched an NBA player work out with an ex-NBA player. The ex-NBA player was one of the game’s best shooters when he played, and consequently, he believed he was an expert shooting coach. However, every instruction to the current player was to make the current player shoot more and more like the ex-player.

I sat and observed with an assistant coach who happened to be another ex-player known for his shooting. This coach had retired after the previous season and had never coached previously. After a few minutes, he asked for my opinion. I offered it. The new coach thought it made sense; he was a beginner coach, and had more flexible opinions about shooting despite his playing success. We talked through my idea, I explained in more depth what I meant. He agreed. He walked across the court and made a suggestion to the older coach based on our conversation.

The older coach basically told him that he (me) was wrong and the idea was stupid. He did not use those words, but that is what I heard. It was clear that he did not value anyone else’s opinion. After all, he was the best shooter in the gym (and the most senior coach with the highest salary); how can anyone tell him anything about shooting?

Again, that is the wrong question. Would you prefer to learn to shoot from the best shooter or the best shooting coach? If your career was on the line, and you had to improve your shooting to make millions of dollars, would you seek out Steph Curry or Chip Engelland, the San Antonio Spurs shooting coach who is credited with developing Kawhi Leonard’s shot or the New Orleans Pelicans’ Fred Vinson who is credited with improving Brandon Ingram’s and Lonzo Ball’s shots? What if you had a completely different body type to Curry? What if you were built like Zion Williamson or Nerlens Noel or, I don’t know, Lu Dort?

These attitudes pervade sports instructions and affect skill development in every sport (of which I am aware). The inflexibility of thought of experts is a problem and it perpetuates things like fake fundamentals from one generation to the next.

Years ago, I wrote that many coaches would be better off putting a basketball at mid-court and leaving, allowing players to play their own pickup games for the duration of practice, rather than continuing with their current practices. This was not a popular statement, especially amongst coaches.

We attribute improvement to practice or in today’s era, to workouts with an individual skills trainer. The purpose of practice or a workout is to improve, so the practice or workout must cause any improvement.

How do we know that practice causes the improvement as opposed to playing games? How do we know that year-to-year improvement is not due to growth, maturation and strength development rather than practice or individual training? How do we know that it’s not a coaching change, improved shot selection, or a different role?

We don’t.

We assume because practice is supposed to improve performance, but we never know for sure because we do not have a control group.

There are several methods we could use to test the efficacy of Program A (practice, individual training, a specific coach/trainer, etc).

We could pre-test a group, have the group train with Program A for a period of time, and post-test the group. This is essentially how we conclude that practice caused the improvement: We see a player today, see the player next month, and attribute the improvement to the practices or training that occurred during that month.

Of course, practices or individual workouts are not the only activities in which the player participated during that month that could conceivably cause or impact improvement or skill development.

To draw more reliable conclusions, and to determine causation not correlation, we have to control for variables that could impact the results. For example, if Program A is a 3x per week individual training program, does the player practice with his team? Does he lift weights? Does he play games? How can we conclude that Program A caused the improvements instead of the team practices, games, or strength training?

A player once attended a weekly clinic that I directed. She also worked with an individual trainer, a strength & conditioning coach, and her high school and AAU teams at the same time. How can we possibly determine which activity caused any improvement?

To control for these confounding variables, we could use a control group. The experimental group uses Program A, and the control group does not. Everything else — lifting weights, playing games, team practices, etc. — remains the same between the two groups. Therefore, if the experimental group improves, and the control group does not, we can suggest that Program A improved performance: Players who engage in individual training 3x per week improve performance more than players who do not participate in any additional training.

Of course, this only demonstrates that Program A is better than nothing; it does not prove anything about the actual training. Does Program A cause the differences between Program A and the control group or is it the extra practice hours? Is any program better than no program? Would the player have improved equally or more by playing pickup games 3x per week instead of the individual training? We do not know because we compared 3x per week of individual training to doing nothing.

To demonstrate that Program A caused the improvements, we need the control group to spend the same amount of time doing something related: Program A does individual training 3x per week, and Program B plays pickup games 3x per week. Now, if Program A improves performance more than Program B, we know that the training had some effect, and it was not just the extra hours on the court that caused the improvement. We can state that three weekly sessions of individual training improves performance more than three weekly sessions of pickup games over the same time period.

Now, coaches do not care about the cause of the improvements; they care about the improvement. If one player works out 3x per week in the offseason with am individual skills trainer, and the other goes to the beach, and they improve to the same degree, does the coach care that one worked out with a trainer and one played at the beach? No. The coach cares that his players improved.

Of course, because we assume that the trainer caused the improvement, the coach would be disappointed by the player who went to the beach and would imagine how much more he would have improved by working out with the trainer.

However, if the two players improved to the same degree, why attribute any improvement to the training? Did the training cause the improvement when a player who went to the beach improved just as much? Maybe the coach should encourage all the players to go to the beach. Each one — going to the beach and working with an individual skills trainer — are correlated equally with the improvement. It is only our perception of the right or best way to improve that makes us believe that the training caused the improvement, but not the beach. Maybe, in reality, it had nothing to do with the beach or the individual skills trainer, and the players improved because they lifted weights 5x per week before heading off in different directions; maybe it was the weekend summer league playing games on Saturdays and Sundays against better competition that caused their improvement.

Basically, the beach is the control group, and the training is Program A. If there is no difference between the two groups, the training program did not cause the player’s improvement. Instead, the improvements were caused by lifting weights, playing in the summer league, or some other mechanism.

When we evaluate coaches and practices, we should not compare the practices to no practice. Instead, the control group should be playing pickup games or a player shooting on his own. To demonstrate that a training program works or that a coach’s practices develop skills, players would have to improve more than if they simply played pickup games or shot by themselves.

My first paragraph essentially suggested that few coaches would demonstrate skill development during their practices that surpassed the skill development that players would derive through playing games or shooting on their own for the same amount of time.

Therefore, our question should be:

Is _______ better than the same amount of time spent playing games?

The control group — playing pickup games — allows us to conclude that the experimental group (Program A) has some effect beyond just the extra hours. Without a control group, who knows what really drives improvement and how much a trainer, coach, a set of drills, etc. affect development?

There are highlights of some players who are described generally, and anonymously, in my new book Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide, now available through Amazon.

Below are some of the drills featured in my new book Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide, now available through Amazon.

.

“Brian McCormick’s philosophy is an absolute game changer for shooting development. Evolution of 180 Shooter provides easy to implement ideas to evolve skill development for players and coaches at all levels.”

— Kenny Atkinson, NBA Head Coach

In 2009, I published 180 Shooter, which described my teaching methodology and drill progressions as a private shooting coach in the prior decade. A few players set NCAA shooting records and became All-Americans, but others struggled, and I examined the cause. I attributed some of their failings to my coaching and workouts, and I quit private coaching.  

Over the last decade, I worked with teams as a head coach and a consultant. I have coached very good shooters — one finished second nationally in 3-point shooting percentage and another set the college’s record for 3FGs — and very good shooting teams: 3rd in 3FG/G (9.7), 6th in 3FG% (37.4%), and 9th in FT% (72.6%).  

Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide chronicles the evolution of my thinking over the last decade and challenges the prevalent shooting dogma. My greatest changes have been to re-define game-like shots and appreciate the environment’s role in developing shooters. This is not a technique or drill book; it focuses on our culture of shooting — from our practice, to the extra shots, to the comfort and confidence — which develops shot makers. 

“If you coach basketball at any level, read and study Brian McCormick’s writing: It will re-calibrate your view of the game. You will think differently about basketball and how to teach the game to others.”

— Lindell Singleton, Head Coach: The Game Matters AAU