EPTI. Introduction
People say shooters are born, I say shooters are made. Take NBA players for example, some shoots at the minimum 3 hours before game time. Repetition, dedication, and practice is how you become a greater shooter. Shooting a basketball is more than just “shooting one handed.” This guide will explain how and why each nuances are done. This guide will explain in breadth a proper form from the ground up.
Q. Why do you need “proper form?”
A standard basketball hoop is 18 inches in diameter. While a standard basketball is 9 inches in diameter. In theory, 2 basketball can fit in a hoop at the same time. This also means you have quite a decent amount of margin of error. Yet shots still miss, and they miss often. Therefore I can make a generalisation saying:
The difference between a make and a miss is only a mere few inches.
By having proper shooting form, you minimize your margin of error as much as possible in order to maximize the chances of making your shot.
Q. Not all NBA players have proper form, but they do just fine.
NBA players have all shot well over a million shots in their lifetime. Shooting 2 hours a day for 3 years straight is enough for 1 million shots. NBA players can easily do more than 2 hours no problem. This means their shot is built through tens of thousands of repetitions that made them who they are today. In short, work ethic. The average joe probably wouldn’t have the dedication of NBA players, so why make it harder on yourself?
Q. Why do I need to become a better shooter?
Yes, it’s true that in basketball, you should get to the rim and do lay-ups as they are the highest percentage shot in basketball. However, to do that you need to become a better shooter. Why?
If you’re good at ball handling and great driver, but poor shooter, people won’t respect your shot. This is especially true when you’re playing 1 on 1. For example in 1 on 1’s, your opponents will camp out right inside the paint, and giving you tons of room to shoot 3’s, or long 2’s. Who can blame them? Why waste their energy defending your jumper if they know that chances are, you’re going to miss 9 shots out of 10? If you’re driving, you have to drive to them first. This means you can’t beat them off the dribble because they’re already underneath the basketball. This also means your layups become contested. This is also very true in NBA. How many times have you heard players and coaches say they’d rather lose a game by giving up jumpers instead of lay ups?
Therefore, this means by becoming a better shooter, you will become better at driving, because then you’re actually going to be beating them off the dribble.
Q. I’m at post player, not a driver, so why should I become a better shooter?
If you’re a post player, you help spread the floor and not clog the paint giving more space for your drivers on your team to operate. Let’s assume you have 2 post players, and a driver, in the paint, along with their respective defenders means 6 players in the paint. How will the driver attempt to get in a layup if there is so much traffic in the middle? The opposing team can stop dribble penetration easily. They can throw 3 players at the driver to stop dribble penetration. (your man that’s guarding you and the other two players defending the two other post players nearby you) This means the driver either has to beat 3 defenders at the same time, or attempt to pass the ball over 3 guys. I’d choose option C: beat one defender.
Secondly, as a post player, things get very physical under the paint, which means you have a greater chance of shooting free throws than perimeter shooters. Free throws = shooting.
Q. How do I know I’m shooting incorrectly?
If you have a video camera, record a video of yourself shooting a basketball. Watch the video at a slow speed to break down your shot and see where/what you are doing wrong.
II. Holding a basketball
Most people know that holding a basketball is just “putting your left hand on the side of the ball, and your right hand underneath the ball.” Yes, that’s true, but it’s not very specific. First of all, the thumb of your shooting hand should be placed on one of the thin black lines that run through a basketball. Your middle finger of your shooting hand should be placed at the center of the ball. When you first start out learning, you should place your middle finger on the air hole where you pump air into your basketball.
Having both the thumb and the middle finger in their respective positions also helps give you a bigger grip of the ball as you have to extend your hand wider to reach both positions at the same time. Again, this means you have more control of the ball as you have to widen your hand more. In this position, you will automatically have a gap underneath the ball and your palm. Your entire hand excluding this gap in the palm should be holding the ball. This position should be natural, you shouldn’t have a gap underneath because you’re forcing the gap, but because of how you hold the ball.
For your left hand, you place it at the side of the basketball and you have to make sure of three things
A) Make sure your hand doesn’t interfere with your shot.
B) Make sure your left hand isn’t used to shoot.
C) Make sure your left hand doesn’t alter your shot.
To tell whether each of these three things is happening, try shooting the ball without your left hand.
Q. Why place your thumb there?
That thumb on the “thin black line” acts as a grip which gives you better control of the basketball.
Q. Why place your middle finger in the middle of the ball?
When you shoot a basketball, your middle finger (and index finger) should be the last fingers that “let goes” of the ball. By placing your middle finger in the middle of the ball, it controls the centre of gravity of the ball and ensures the ball goes straight and won’t go in different directions.
Q. Why place your middle finger on the air hole?
The air hole is positioned right in the middle of the basketball, this ensures that your middle finger is placed at the middle of the ball and gets you into the habit.
Q. Won’t trying to find the “air hole” during the game waste precious time?
That’s true. The point of doing this early on when you’re learning and practicing is getting you into the habit of making sure you always have your middle finger at the middle of the ball. With time, putting your finger in the exact middle of the ball becomes second nature.
Q. Why shouldn’t the palm touch the ball?
There is no muscle on the palm, the muscles exists in the fingers. This means your palm doesn’t give control of the ball, but your fingertips do.
III. Body
Your body should be “squared” to the hoop. This means your entire body is facing the direction of the basket. Both of your shoulders are even, so one side of your body isn’t tilted to another side. Your elbow should be tightly close to the side of your upper body. Your back should be bent downwards, but the back should be entirely straight. The knees are also bent. I stress the importance of bending your knees as it gives you more strength for your shot so your shot can go farther, as well as a higher arc. This is especially helpful when shooting your free throws. The feet should be should be even, but are a few spaces apart. This means that one of your feet isn’t placed farther than the other. Like your body, this ensures you’re not tilted to one side.
If done correctly, your right elbow and your right knee are parallel to your left elbow and knee. This means they are straight, and you have a line of symmetry between your left and your right side of your body. This also means that you place your feet far enough apart that they are straight with your elbows. Basically, shoulder width apart.
When you face the basket, imagine that the basket is between your feet.
Q. Why shouldn’t your body be tilted to another side?
If your body is tilted to another side, it alters your shot as your body isn’t straight and may cause the ball to shot at a different direction instead of the ball being straight.
Q. Why does the elbow need to be as close to your body as possible?
This ensures that your arm will be straight and helps to make sure that you are shooting the ball with 1 hand. If it isn’t straight, your right hand will move off to the side, causing you to shoot with 2 hands.
Q. How does bending your knee affect your shot?
A lot of energy comes from your feet, this means bending your knee and launching straight up causes more energy when you shoot the ball, and giving your shot more arc.
Q. People say feet should be staggered, why do you say feet should be even?
If your feet are staggered, it means your body will be tilted to another direction (more specifically your shoulders), this alters your shot by not allowing the ball to shoot straight.
If you practice shooting the ball while having your feet staggered, during game situations your feet will be staggered even more. The opposing team is not going to give you time to make sure you have perfect shooting form, so while if you practice having your feet even, it minimises how much your feet are staggered during games.
Q. Why should your knees be exactly below your shoulder?
This ensures your body is balanced while you shoot, so it helps make sure your shot is straight and doesn’t change its direction. If your feet are too close together, you lose balance, while if they’re too far apart, it’s harder for you to jump off the ground.
Q. People say your right foot should be pointed towards the goal, why do you say basket should be between your feet?
You’re not going to be balanced as you’re only using your right foot to shoot and your entire body won’t be completely pointed toward the goal, and only half of your body is.
IV. Position of the basketball
There are two positions I recommend when you’re holding the ball before you launch and shoot your shot. Triple threat position and holding the ball in the middle of your body. In both of these positions, you should already have your hands ready in their respective position (left hand on side, right hand underneath.) This minimises the amount of time you have to take your shot.
Having the ball in the middle of your body is obviously the most common position. However, I don’t recommend this position, and usually is used during free throws. However, this position is also used when you catch-and-shoot. You will have both your hand stretched out, but instead of having your right hand underneath the ball, have it on the side facing you. Essentially, you form a 90 degree angle, from your head down to your arms.
Triple threat position is what I recommend during game situations. Again, have your hands ready in the respective positions, meaning hold the ball like you’re preparing to take a shot. In this position you hold your ball on the right side of your waist. You still have your left hand on the side, but this time, right hand on the top. This is known as triple threat as it allows you to do 3 things without changing your stance. You already have your right hand on top of the ball ready to dribble, you can pass the ball from one handed bounce pass to 2 handed chest passes, and also have your hands in the respective positions ready to shoot. You should have the ball in a 180 degree angle.
Q. When you hold the ball in the middle of the body, why can’t you hold the ball with 2 hands on the side?
This takes more time to get your hands into position, giving the defender more time to guard you. Even when you’re shooting free throws, you might as well have it there since the only thing you can do when you’re shooting a free throw is shooting a free throw.
Q. What do you mean by catch-and-shoot?
In this position, you will already be in your stance, feet set, body pointing towards the basket etc. When someone passes the ball to you, you will catch the ball and shoot automatically. In this situation, it’s better to have the ball in the middle of your body since it requires less time to rise up and shoot compared to triple threat.
Q. Why shouldn’t you have your right hand underneath the ball when you have it in the middle of your body?
While having the ball in this position makes it more obvious you’re going to shoot the ball, it’s going to be even more obvious that you’re shooting the ball if you have your hand underneath the ball, which is why I prefer the triple threat position during game situations.
Q. Why is the triple threat position better than having the ball between your body?
As stated, in triple threat position, it makes you unpredictable. You can either drive, shoot, or pass all without changing your stance. Your defender can’t be sure that what you plan to do, giving you the edge. If you have the ball between your body, the only thing you can do without changing your stance is raise up and shoot.
Q. In triple threat position, your right hand is on top of the ball, so don’t you actually have to change your stance when you shoot?
No, the ball is in a 180 degrees, when you bring the ball up, it will automatically adjust and have your hand underneath the ball when you raise up and shoot.
Q. How do I know whether to use the “free throw position” or the triple threat position?
This is a difficult question to answer as each situation is different. When you’re creating a shot off, it’s usually the triple threat, while having the ball in the middle of your body is when others create for you. However this is not always the case.
V. Shooting the ball
When you rise up and shoot the ball, you should still be able to see the bottom half of the ball and your hands. A common misconception is that the ball is on the middle of your head. Where it should be however is above your eyes and above your head. Your right elbow should form a 90 degree angle, and the basket should be between your two forearms.
When you have the ball raised, your arm shouldn’t be moving when you shoot. You should be flicking your wrist. The entire ball should leave your hand and your middle finger and your index finger should be the last finger to leave the ball. Your left hand should not affect how you shoot the shot. The entire point of the left hand is to raise the ball up so it won’t drop on the ground. Your left hand shouldn’t move and neither should your any of your left fingers.
When you jump, time your jump to shoot when it’s at the highest position. However, you want to jump strong and fast, without hangtime. When shooting the ball, the most important goal is decreasing the chances of getting the ball blocked.
Q. Why shouldn’t the ball be anywhere else besides above your eyes?
If the ball is at the middle of the head, or behind your head, you will shoot the ball at a lower point than you would if shot above your eyes. This will cause the ball to go at a lower arc. This is because you will have to bend forearm backwards to get the ball between the head, and in the process destroying that 90 degrees angle. Secondly, the ball takes longer to shoot, and giving your defender more chances to block your shot.
If you shoot the ball before it reaches the eye level, it’s true you will get your shot off faster, however, the ball won’t be at its highest possible point, again more chances of having your shot blocked. This also means that your arc will not be optimum. If you have the ball above your eyes, it achieves the goal of getting the ball off quickly, so you won’t get blocked, shoots at the highest point, again helps to not get blocked, and having a high arc.
Q. What is the importance of maintaining that 90 degree angle when the ball is raised?
This 90 degree angle helps ensure that the ball is at the highest point. If it’s less than 90 degrees, your shot will be at a lower point and taking longer to shoot, if it’s more than 90 degrees, the ball will also be at a lower point.
Q. How do you know you’re shooting the ball at the optimum position?
Before the ball is shot, you should still be able to see bottom half of the ball and your hands. Getting a video camera to record yourself taking a shot and analyzing it to make sure you’re doing it right also helps enormously as it’s often hard to see your mistakes without looking at it.
Q. What do you mean by shooting at the highest position?
When you jump, you shoot the basketball before you start coming down. A good way to increase your jumping height is by bending your knees.
Q. What exactly do you mean jumping at the highest point without hangtime on your shot?
Hangtime is jumping and staying in the air for a period of time. You don’t want to be in hangtime when the ball is raised as it gives more chances of the ball being blocked. It also gets rid of the power you get from bending the knees and your feet. You want these powers to help your shot, not just for getting you up in the air.
Q. Some say to have the ball at the side of the head, why do you say above the eyes and head?
It’s true that having the ball at the side of the head allows your right hand to be completely straight instead of bending your elbow to allow the ball to be above your eyes. However, what this means that your shot isn’t going to be straight unless only your right side of your body is pointing towards the basket. If you want your entire body pointed towards your basket, your shot won’t be straight. By shooting above your eyes, your entire body will be pointed towards the basket and your shot will be straight.
VI. Aiming
If you notice, I’ve mentioned the entire acronym BEEF (Balance, Eyes, Elbow, and follow through) besides follow through. The follow through has multiple purposes. After you shoot, you want your entire arm fully extended. This is known as the follow through. Having the arm fully extended allows you to make sure you finish your shot completely and correctly. You want the fingers to point down towards the ground to make sure that the ball completely rolls off your finger. The position of the hand however, is what you use to make sure the ball is going straight towards the middle of the basket. You want your hand positioned in the middle of the basket. When you’re practicing at first in the beginning, check to see whether your hand position and adjust it to get yourself into the habit of placing it there. This helps you to make sure the ball is going exactly going where you want to go. Therefore, the process of shooting doesn’t end when the ball has been shot.
The eyes are also an important tool to help you aim. Ideally you want to use your dominant eye to aim. I recommend at first when you’re learning is to close your other eye and use only 1 eye to aim to get you into the habit. Your dominant eye is to look towards above the middle of the basket. You want to look at the top of the backboard where you the ball then goes straight down. I didn’t mention this earlier, but you should have the ball over your dominant eye.
Another important thing in shooting is arc. The optimum degree of the angle of your arc is 45 degrees. Of course, you’re not going to be able to tell whether your shot is 45 degrees or not. Therefore what I recommend you to do instead is, aiming the ball so the highest point of the arc is above the backboard. This gives the ball a higher arc. Again to achieve this arc requires your knees.
As mentioned previously, your knees also help to get better arc.
Q. What’s wrong with not fully extending your arm?
Fully extending your army helps make sure you finish your shot correctly and completely. It also helps to maintain proper arc.
Q. How does the hand help you aim?
In theory, you want to shoot the basketball straight. This means that if your hand is shooting straight towards the basket, the position of your hand equals the position of the basket.
Q. What do you mean by look above the basket and at the backboard?
When you’re shooting straight at the basket, you want to maintain an arc. If you look at the middle of the basket, that often causes people to shoot flat (little to no arc). If you’re aiming up, your arc goes up. Therefore you imagine that tiny “bulls eye” in the middle of the basket, and imagine this bulls eye going above the backboard, so you’re aiming both at the basket and above the backboard.
Q. What is the importance of an arc?
If your shot doesn’t have an arc, your shot will be flat. This means that although it’s going in, the metal rim at the front of the basket causes your shot to go short. This means your shot which would’ve went in if there wasn’t the metal rim stopped you from scoring.
Q. Why must I have a big arc instead of a little arc?
Having a bigger arc actually makes your shot more likely to go in. An arc of 30 degrees covers 127 square inches, while 45 degree arc covers 178 square inches. This means that’s an increase of over 40 percent.
Q. How do you know if a shot is 45 degrees?
You can’t measure that in game situations. That’s why you should try and aim the highest point of the arc above the backboard.
Q. You said to have everything balanced, why isn’t the eye balanced?
If you aim with your dominant eye, you don’t need to move your head, and you can’t move the position of your eyes, so you are still balanced.
VII. Practicing
When you start practicing, you want to have each and every shot be the same. There is no point at all to practicing shooting differently every shot; you’re not going to get better. At first, I recommend you start somewhere around the free throw line. Free throw line isn’t too close and it isn’t too far out. You don’t want to be too close as you won’t be practicing on your arc and too far, you will be destroying your shot. Shooting 3’s is a mistake when you’re starting out as you’re not strong enough yet and don’t have enough strength. You will be learning bad habits to your shot in order to get the shot off.
Don’t worry about how much shots you’re making, but instead worry about how much shots you’re shooting. Aiming to shoot 300 shots in 1 session is better than making 100 shots in 1 session. If you get on a hot streak and make 100 baskets in 200 shots, you’re not getting as much practice as you would if you did 300 shots instead. On the other hand, if you’re on a cold streak, you’ll often get discouraged and pissed that you’re not making shots and you’ll give up, before you reach your goal. Also don’t worry about how much shots you make out of 300, you’re putting unnecessary pressure on yourself. Later on when you get better, it’s perfectly fine to count how much baskets you make to see if you’re getting better or not. But at the beginning, the most important thing is to have fun shooting a basketball, and not worry about how much you’re making and how much you’re missing. One of the most important parts of practicing shooting is to build confidence, you’re not going to get more confident if all you do is count the number of times you miss.
At the beginning, try and shoot only straight at the basket, don’t worry about shooting at the elbow (45 degree angles of a half court) or at the corners. Practice at the middle of the court, which is why I like to shoot at the free throw line. I don’t mean shooting actual free throws, but shooting jumpers at the free throw lines.
It’s ok to not shoot a lot of baskets early on. Quality always is better than quantity. It’s perfectly fine to only average 1 shot per minute, to check whether you’re doing everything right and whether you’re shooting correctly. I recommend that you should record down the number of shots you take a day when you’re practicing to mark your progress. Eventually, increase the number of shots you take a day as you get better and better. Have a watch nearby to time how long you’re shooting in a session, and see how much you average. Eventually increase to 3 shots a minute, to 4 shots and etc. However, increase only if you’re getting quality shots up faster, not because you’re shooting faster to pressure yourself. You don’t want to destroy your shot.
Since shooting is building your muscle memory, you’ll have an extremely difficult time to correct your shot once you get a lot of shot off. This is why it’s important to get your form right at the earliest time. This also means that once you get better, you should practice at different locations. Even though you practice a lot at the free throw line, shooting at a couple of feet away will be harder as you are used to shooting at a certain location and a certain strength. You should try pick out a few locations to shoot and rotate on these locations after every shot.
VIII. Strength Training
I’m not very knowledgeable on strength training, however I felt this is needed as it is an important part of basketball. Besides making you faster, jump higher, and stronger, it also helps to reduce the chances of injuries occurring. Of course, injuries always do happen in sports and you can’t prevent it. Strength training in basketball differs from strength training that body builders do. Basketball players do plyometrics training. While someone in WWE is stronger than a NBA player, they release their power slower.
If athlete A and B both have 80 kg, A can do a maximum squat of 181 kg and B can do a maximum squat of 136 kg, A is obviously stronger. However, if both were to do a vertical jump, A can do 90 kg in 0.2 seconds, while B can 102 kg in 0.2, B is obviously better suited for basketball. Essentially, plyometrics is basically releasing as much power in as short amount of time as possible.
Since I’m not very knowledgeable on strength training, I prefer not to say the exact areas of where you need strength training. What I can say is, obviously to work on your fingers, arms, and legs. There are two things you can do to make them stronger. Buying a jump rope helps arms and legs, and is quite a fun activity to do. It also has helps cardio a lot, which is obviously quite important for basketball. For your fingers, bouncing a ball using 1 finger helps to strengthen them. Basically repeat the process 10 times for each fingers.
