Basketball Free Throw Shooting: Personal Preferences Don’t Mean Better Shooting
- Blog:
By Ed Palubinskas
Shooting free throws, or foul shots, I think is the most important fundamental in the game and possibly the most difficult to master. All it takes is an observance of the National Free Throw statistics for all skill levels over the last 50 years. You will notice not much dramatic improvement.
Great shooters become that way because they seem to be more consistent or more efficient than average shooters. Duh! Perhaps they become this way because of practice habits, because they have a physical edge, or maybe they have a better understanding of shooting principles, or they have received superior coaching.
One reason we know that the FT shot process is the hardest skill to perfect is proven by looking at the best players in the world, those in the NBA, and how they struggle at the FT line. It is just as much a concern to them as it is to any competitive player on the planet. Every player gets to the line sooner or later and every point is critical, unless it’s a blowout game. Quite a few NBA teams still have players that shoot in the 50’s, and of course they range anywhere between 50 and 90%. This year in the NBA playoffs, we saw phenomenal shooting from the line by Dirk Nowitzki, with the Dallas Mavericks who shot 24/24 in one game, setting an all time NBA record. The whole team shot better from everywhere thus leading to the championship. It proves my point that, if a team is a great free throw shooting team, then they will also be a better outside shooting team as well.
In reality, the worst of the pro shooters should be able to maintain at least an 80% average, while the better ones should be in the mid 80’s to lower 90’s. We should reasonably expect that from professional players while the franchise owners and coaches should insist on this level of achievement. (I leave it to the reader to deduce why the level of accuracy is rather mediocre across the board.)
Let me share with you some random thoughts on how some of the mechanics, or physical actions, applied by players are, in actuality, unrealized flaws. We know they are unrealized because they are habitually repeated. The problem here is that the unsuspecting player is indoctrinated to believe that more practice will make him/her much better. Without knowing we are doing wrong, we still practice thinking we are actually practicing the right things. In shooting, poor mechanics and bad old habits are manifested in errant shots within a second.
Another preference is placing the right foot on the nail hole for right handed shooters. My preference is to split the nail hole about 9” between both feet with toes about an inch from the line. My feet are as wide as the rim or directly below my shoulders. (It’s not that relevant, because I can make 99/100 with my feet placed anywhere on the line, as long as my feet are shoulder width, balanced and squared. (More on this in another article.) One’s feet alignment have little to do with great shooting.
Using the guide hand to help the shot is not a personal preference. It is a natural habit developed because of early physical weakness and a lack of attention to specifics at a young age. Most players don’t even realize they are doing it. As great a shooter as Ray Allen is he has a slight inverted left hand on his release. When the guide hand turns and faces the basket after the shot is an indication that effort was applied by that hand to the shot. It may only be 5%, 15% or even 30%, but that is enough to throw off any shot and change the consistency.
Here’s one that many players have no idea they are doing. They hold their follow through arm at around 90 degrees to the floor. Remember that the angle of entry = the angle of release - One of Newton’s Laws. The problem with this high release and follow through is that a lot of shots hit the front of the rim or are generally short because most of the energy is thrust “up” and not “at” the rim. On the other hand, a lot of shooters follow through with their arms at well below the optimum angle of 45 degrees, thus causing shots to be flat. The optimum angle for a shot is between 42 and 48 degrees.
Possibly the worst of all unrealized ‘flaws’ is lateral movement in any part of the shooting mechanism. This will generally be manifested in the fingers, hand and wrist. When the joints (15 in the fingers and wrist and 38 tendons controlling these joints) move laterally they send a message of lateral energy to the ball which conflicts with shooting the ball straight.
Notice when you write how much control your index, mid finger and thumb move to control exact movement desired. Great penmanship is a result of great control and pride in the way you write. See any similarity here? This control fades when you doze off while pen in hand. (More common with high school and college students.) Just from understanding this concept you can see how important it is to have directed effort or energy from the fingers by controlling the movement of joints and tendons. Your conscious mind can control the joint movements or, in this case, non-movement, but you will not be able to focus consciously on the movement of the tendons. You can only feel tendons consciously when they tear, thus creating the pain in a specific area.
By understanding this principle, you will see that by keeping your hand or fingers spread you will be so much more consistent, since the spread hand is easier to replicate than a loose sloppy finish. Remember that only the powerful wrist joint is actually involved in bending at 90 degrees on the shot release. Understand that there are players whose wrist can’t bend 90 degrees. That’s fine. Just make sure that the wrist bend, snap, follow through, or whatever you call it, is maxed out to attain the consistency you need. The finger spread on the shooting hand (same on guide hand) should be the same from the start of the shot to the finish of the shot. 99% of shooters today start with a wide hand and finish with a closed hand. It is at this exact instant, from when the ball is resting on the wide open hand and the hand starts forward generating speed on the ball that almost all hands start closing and all fingers go from wide to open to closed shut. Also the knuckles are all bent and all the fingertips tend to congregate together in a clump. Most of us know this as the goose head or cobra head because this is the shape all the fingers form when generating force. We should all do the opposite. Spread fingers for control and strength. Hand should be the same at the end of the shot as when the hand is under the ball in the shot pocket.
NOTE: One way of knowing your finger spread is right is when you do a full finger tip push up. You can’t cheat on this. You need the whole finger spread to sustain your own weight distributed evenly amongst all the fingers. That’s how a ball should feel on each pad of the hand before shooting. Hold this pose till ball hits rim. If the fingers are narrow or too close together, they all tend to be involved in the release and there is no accountability for effort per finger. The index finger should take the lion’s share, or about 90% of the energy, and the pinky and thumb should be accountable for about 5% each which is mainly for width and provides the stability like a rudder. The hand width is like a rudder. Once you close the fingers together quickly there is a loss on direction, since we don’t know which finger was responsible for the direction. I feel this to be the most important thing in a shot. We all know the distance from years of shooting. That’s just muscle/mind memory. A novice at shooting will be challenged with distance.
Another crazy preference is the pre-shot routine. Many believe that their pre-shot routine actually has something to do with the shot. When you load a bullet into a chamber of a rifle, does that have anything to do with the actual shot? Not till you point and decide to pull the trigger does a shot occur. It’s the same with shooting a ball. Pre-shot routines could be taking the same amount of dribbles each time, praying to a Supreme Being for Divine Intervention, circling the body with the ball, blowing kisses to the crowd, whatever. These are wasted movements unassociated with the final outcome. They are not wrong or right, just disconnected from the actual shot. Don’t believe me. Test yourself. Shoot 50 free throws with any selected pre-shot routine and 50 without. If you are a great shooter, it won’t make a difference. If you are a bad shooter, it will be about the same result.