UrsaMajor said:
I know we did well at the line on Saturday, so this post isn't about Cal.
I heard an interesting discussion about improving FT shooting by a former college coach who made the point that almost every team practices FT shooting incorrectly. Players are typically asked to shoot X number of FT's at the end (or beginning) of practice. His point was that shooting 25 or 50 in a row--it's easier to correct your mistakes and seem to be shooting a higher percentage. Unfortunately, that's not how FT's are shot in games. In the game, you go to the line after having just been running up/down the court and often involved in a collision. Then you step to the line, shoot twice, and that's it. Different state of mind, different state of body, and no chance to fine tune your shot. He said that when he coached, he would randomly stop practice and ask someone to shoot two FT's, then resume the drills. This was a better way to mimic game situations.
My basketball coaching ended with middle school, so I'm wondering what others who have more experience or have thought about it more (SFCity? HD?) think of this.
Thanks but I may not be the right person to ask about how to teach players to improve their free throw shooting. No one ever taught me how to shoot free throws and I never taught anyone else to shoot them. I would defer to Beached Bear and Hoop Dreams, and listen to what they have to say. I think you have hit upon something, and that free throws are more mental than physical, and to improve free throw shooting, the mental side should get the lion's share of attention, IMO.
As to shooting, I was almost entirely self-taught. I shot free throws at well over 90% in competition over a brief 10+ year career. But even at that percentage, I still wanted to improve. I wanted to shoot 100%. No one ever has. You can do it for a game or a few games. I was 24-24 during my senior year in high school. I was primarily a perimeter shooter, so I didn't have too many free throw attempts. I never thought that was a big deal, until a couple of years ago, a friend told me that 24-24 was pretty cool. I guess it was, but I never thought about it.
I taught myself to shoot. I did not understand what I was doing then, but over 60 years later, I can finally begin to understand how I did it. My dad tried to teach me to shoot at first, when I was a little tyke. A two-handed set shot, and an underhanded free throw style. I had already played a lot of tennis, so my right arm was much more developed than my left, and all two-handed shots went way off line. He took me to some Cal games and I watched some players shooting one-handed push shots from the ear, a la Hank Luisetti, I guess. I watched players like Dick Tamberg. Bob Matheny was my idol. But I developed my own style, shooting from the hip, with a high arc, almost straight up, to avoid getting the shot blocked. I shot all my free throws one handed. I aimed for perfection, to drop the ball through the center of the hoop and touch as little net as possible. That way, if I was a little bit off and grazed the rim, I'd still make the shot. I tried different spins, different amounts of spin. Backspin was the most natural, but I tried no spin and a combo of backspin and horizontal circular spin for longer shots I loved to shoot the latter one, but I was afraid to try it in games and risk getting benched.
In about the 6th grade, the best player in our neighborhood, who captained our team, and went on to play a CB in the NFL for 5 years, showed up at the playground sporting a two-handed jump shot, where he shot the ball from way behind his head. We all tried to copy it. There was not one TV set in the neighborhood, so we had little chance to see games. I went to a Saturday matinee at the Haight Theatre for a dime, and the newsreel showed a game clip of Robin Freeman, the nation's leading scorer from Ohio State. I tried to copy his jump shot. So I now had two shots, a one hand push and a jumper. I always liked traditional hook shots, with hand, arm, and both shoulders all lined up with the hoop, probably because Bob Mckeen of Cal was another idol of mine. To avoid ever getting it blocked, I used to shoot it up in the air and falling away, my own invention. Then I invented a drive parallel to the baseline across the paint, and as I passed the basket I'd rise and fall away from the hoop. The shot was unblockable. The only player I ever saw use a similar shot was Jerry Lucas. He used to play near the basket to one side. He catch a pass, and then instead os shooting, he used to quickly dribble out to the opposite elbow, and shoot a fade away hook from there. Deadly.
We had an older player in the neighborhood, who was an All-City guard from Poly High, For some reason, he did not show up all summer in the schoolyard to shoot hoops. Right before Fall practice, he showed up. He was shooting every single shot, set shots, jumpers, hooks off the backboard. Bank shots. I asked him why. He said he had gotten into an awful slump when he couldn't buy a basket, so he decided to try something different. He was just as deadly with the new method. He made the All-City team again. I decided to try it, and got pretty good at it, so now I had another new shot I could use, throwing my hooks and mid-range jumpers off the glass.
As to practicing free throws, I never did it like has been described in this thread, except maybe a little like the OP. If any coach brought in recorded sounds from a basketball game to get us to focus better, all of us kids would have thought him off his rocker. If any coach told me to shoot 60 or 100 free throws in a row, I would have tried some way to avoid such drudgery. You have to simulate game conditions in your mind when practicing, and you never shoot many in a row in a game. Not only that, it would be boring to shoot a bunch of free throws. I know there are these guys who can make 2000 in a row in exhibitions, but how many can they make in a game, where you shoot one and many not get another until 20 minutes later? Rick Barry made 60 consecutive one season. I shot alone, by myself, for hours, and I shot all my shots, layups, mid range jumpers, hook shots with either hand, and perimeter shots. When I missed a shot, I'd run and rebound the ball and shoot from that point, or I would dribble to another spot and shoot from there. If the rebound was short, I'd shoot a mid range jumper or a hook, if it was long, I'd shoot a perimeter shot. If I made the basket, I might say, "Good. Let's try that one again, and make it nothing but net." Every so often I'd sprinkle in a trip to the free throw line and try one or two. If I missed, sometimes I'd stay there until I made two. If the first ones were way off, I might shoot ten of them. I hardly ever shot more than ten in a row, and that was usually just to challenge myself before I went home to dinner. Also, I always practiced a lot of shots from 30-45 feet. I seldom shot from there in a game, but I felt that if I became a good shot from far way, then the shorter shots would be a piece of cake.
One thing about copying other players, I think a player should pick out some star who is around the same height to copy. Most taller players have so much trouble shooting them, then it might be worth looking for a good tall player to copy, say Kevin Durant or Larry Bird, but not Calvin Murphy, Mark Price or Steph Curry.
Shooting free throws is perhaps 90% mental, or it was for me. The whole idea in training the mental side is developing confidence, that's obvious. Fear of failure is a big motivator. When I was a gangly uncoordinated kid of 10 years, we had games every day at lunchtime in the schoolyard. The way we picked who got to play was we all lined up to shoot one free throw. The first 10 players to make their free throw got to play in the game. The ones who did not make their free throws could go play volleyball or dodgeball with the girls. And get teased unmercifully. There was no way I was going to miss that one free throw and go play with the girls. Nowadays, the girls would also be playing basketball at lunchtime, maybe even better than the boys. When I played on teams, the only way I would get to play is if I could score, otherwise I rode the pine, because I was maybe the least athletic kid on any team I played for. Everyone in my family was an athlete, father, uncles, and older cousins. I simply had to be one too, just to hold my head up high at family dinners, and the only way I could make a basketball team was to shoot better than anyone else. If I made the team, then the coaches might teach me all the other stuff like teamwork, passing, rebounding and defense. I never thought about missing a free throw. I used to look at it as a free chance to make a shot and impress the coach, so I could stay in the game.
SFCityBear
