calumnus said:
SFCityBear said:
drizzlybear said:
SFCityBear said:
With all due respect, I'm not sure why we are discussing this. Joel Brown is a player who takes less than one three point attempt (0.9) per game. He shoots them at a .325 clip (career), making a little below one out three, so on average, he makes one every 3 or 4 games. Over his career, his threes have been almost irrelevant. This year, he has been making them well below his usual percentage, so it would be wise for him to take even less attempts, as taking the same or more than usual would not be helping the team.
We had a point guard, Paris Austin, who also did not make threes very often, which we discussed, but not as much as we have discussed Brown's threes. Actually, Brown had a much better percentage than Austin, who shot them at .255 at Cal. And Austin also did not have many attempts, averaging 0.9 per game as well. Another point we had was Ty Wallace. Wallace shot threes at .292, better than Austin, but not as good as Brown's career average. The thing that bugged me about Wallace (and Cuonzo) was that Wallace took too many attempts (3.1 per game, or 4.0 per 40 min) for someone with a low percentage of success. Take that many and you are not helping your team.
Improving one's three point shooting is very iffy. It is a long shot, making it a low percentage shot, compared to most. But typically a player only shoots a couple of three point attempts in a game, so he hardly gets warmed up. The great ones, like Larry Bird or Steph Curry are shooting them all game long, so they are warmed up. They often hit 3 or 4 in a row, or more. Part time players like Jeff Powers or Nick Kerr are just good shots. They come off the bench and bingo, they hit their first (and sometimes only) shot. And they do that most of the time. They need hardly any warmup. So imagine a guy like Joel Brown, who might take a three after being in the game say, 5 minutes, or instead, maybe he's played 25 minutes of running, driving, passing rebounding, playing defense, and now he has an opening to take a three. Very different scenarios, and very hard to prepare for. The other thing is good shooters are born with an eye. You can tell by the 5th or 6th grade if a kid can shoot or not. I'm sure there are examples of players who can become better three point shooters beginning as a freshman in college who can't shoot threes, but I can't think of any at the moment.
Brown is a very poor free throw shooter for a guard at .468 career. That, IMO, is the shot he should be working on, because even if he never takes another three, he will get a couple of free throw attempts in games, and if he could improve that, it would help the team a little. Plus, it is easier for most shorter players at least to improve free throws than improve three point shooting. The distance is shorter, and no one is guarding you when you shoot them in a game. Nothing much to be concerned with other than your stroke and your mind, and of course, your confidence.
If you look at the original post, it is specifically about the possibility that Brown is already improving his free throws. He has made 67% of his last 12 free throws. As that post says, it's obviously a small sample size, so it could be misleading; but it also could be a sign that he is improving, and could potentially become an adequate (though still not ideal) FT shooter. And that would be huge. And that is the point of the original post.
I understood your original post. I wrote a lengthy post in reply, trying to say, with all due respect to you, that while an improvement in Brown's free throws would be huge, perhaps for him personally, and for his fans who care about his play, but it would not often be huge for the Cal team. He just does not get enough free throw attempts in a game to matter a lot, except in really close games decided by one or two points. And Cal usually loses by more than that. He averages less than two attempts per game. Nobody hardly ever fouls him. Brown is a terrific defender, and does not commit many personal fouls himself, but he commits more personal fouls than people foul him. Over the last two years, he has averaged 1.75 free throw attempts per game, while also fouling opponents at a rate of 2.6 personal fouls per game. He makes free throws at 0.85 per game.
For Brown to make a huge difference in the outcome of Cal games, he has to learn how to draw fouls. The usual way is to make more baskets, or make more assists, perhaps, or break down your defender on the dribble, get into the paint more. The big problem Brown has with this is that he is very fast, and very quick, and defenders can't catch up to him and foul him. They can't foul him much on the dribble, because his handle is too good, too quick. He blows by his man so fast, he leaves him in the dust. If he could finish better and finish more, score more points in the paint, he would start drawing fouls. If he could shoot mid-range shots and make them, he would draw more fouls. If he could make threes, and make more of them (he only shot one three point attempt per game over the last two seasons), then he would draw fouls. He is just too darn quick for most of his defenders, and not yet skilled enough to shoot and score a lot over the bigger defenders. He needs to get better at dishing in the lane, so that defenders will try extra hard to keep him out of the lane, and may have to foul him in the process, and give him free throws to shoot.
So, in my opinion, he has to work on drawing fouls, which is a skill, and work on his shooting from the field. He needs to learn to change speeds, slow down sometimes to sucker a defender into a foul. He has two speeds, fast and faster. You have to give the defender time to foul you. And practice your shooting more. Make a lot of baskets, and then defenders will give you free throws to shoot. Until that starts happening, it does not pay many dividends to practice shooting your free throws. Unless he can get more attempts, he is looking at adding maybe one more free throw made every other game, on average.
That is a bit of chicken and egg. Do you really want a 50% FT shooter trying to draw fouls and get to the line? In fact, I am surprised more teams don't intentionally foul Brown at the end of close games. You want him to improve his FT shooting before he starts trying to shoot more of them.
I also think underhand is a better solution for a 7' back to the basket center (Wilt or Shaq).
As a PG the biggest improvement Brown could make would be to have a reliable shot from the three point line and from the foul line. I see them as closely related. It is similar shooting mechanics, repetition and confidence. A shooting coach should be able to help with both. Maybe a sports psychologist too. One aspect of practicing free throws is it is not standing at the free throw line with someone rebounding for you and shooting 100 FTs.. it is not catch and shoot. It is getting the ball, walking up to the line, gathering yourself, going through a routine, and shooting, then repeating the entire process 100 times.
Well, there are different strokes for different folks. There is more than one way to teach free throws, and more than one way to practice them. Nothing you can do by walking to a line and shooting and then repeating the process 100 times can simulate what you will do in a game with a crowd yelling at you to miss or make, the pressure, a coach calling a timeout to freeze you, all of it. What you have to do is train your mind to stop thinking, and worrying about the ways you can miss the shot (as Al McGuire said), and you need to practice several free throws in a row, to get confidence in the stroke. The best way to get the confidence to make them in a game is to have experience making them in games.
I was on a free throw shooting team of three players when I was about 11 or 12 years old. We traveled around the city and the bay, competing in matches with other teams. A match consisted of each player shooting 60 free throws. Anatole was our best shooter. He usually made 60 in a row. George was second, and he usually made 57 or 58. I was 3rd, making about 56 or 57. In the matches, I used to get a little bored after I made 40 or 50 in a row, and I would begin to miss occasionally, so I agree with your point about not shooting 100 free throws in practice. When I practiced free throws, I rarely shot more than 10 free throws, unless I missed one or two, then I might take a few more. I often experimented with standing in a different spot, a little to the left or the right. One foot on the line, or 2 feet on the line. And I experimented with different strokes, one hand from the hip, two hand, two hand over hand. Even tried the Hal Greer method of shooting a jump shot free throw. But I never ever used those in a game. I always used the one hand FT, because it was reliable enough.
Anatole, George, and I were also on the same basketball team, and won the league championship. It was odd that I always shot free throws better in games than I did in the FT matches or in practice. I was 24 for 24 in my last year of high school. Some players are better in games than in practice, and that was me. I don't like either of the practice methods you describe, shooting 100 FTs in a row, or walking to the line and going through the routine 100 times in a row. My high school coach, who as I said, was a fine underhand free throw shooter, often had us practice free throws, but we shot only 10 in a row at any one session. Shoot much more than that and boredom and distraction can set in, except for guys like Anatole. I think coach understood that.
As for your chicken and egg, I'm not convinced. If I am Brown, I would wonder this: if I seldom get awarded a free throw in a game, why is the coach asking me to practice free throws? Does he really want me to get one more point every other game (because that is what I'll be giving him if I improve my shooting to 40%), a half a point per game. I sort of agree that he practice threes more, but not too much, because he is starting with such an unorthodox stroke, that I wonder if he can be much more successful with it than he is. I would prefer that he work mid-range to shots in the paint, sort of the Jordan Shepherd toolbox, a player who can score a variety of ways in the 2-point range. His 3 point shooting is no great threat, so he doesn't get fouled much shooting threes. He does get 4.4 FT attempts a game, which is almost 3 times as many as Brown gets.
I don't think free throw and the 3-pointer are similar mechanics. One you are on the move, up in the air with no solid base to shoot from, releasing the shot at the height of your jump (unless your style is similar to Steph Curry, who releases his shot on the way up in his jump), and with little time to think. The free throw is shot from a solid stationary base, with both feet planted on the floor, very little movement.
I preferred practicing shots longer than free throws, from 15 to 35 feet out. The better I got in practice in making those, the more confidence I had to make short jump shots. I shot from a different spot on the floor with each shot. That is the best way to improve, IMO, rather than shoot several shots from one spot, and it simulates game conditions in that aspect.
SFCityBear
