Evan Turner’s rookie season was a tough one and his role change offensively played a part in that. The 2010 National Player of the Year as a junior for Ohio State, Turner went from a ball dominant point guard being used primarily in pick and roll sets for the Buckeyes to a largely spot-up role player for the Philadelphia 76ers, a role that put even more of an emphasis on his set shot.
The results were not pretty. Turner had a tough time extending his range out to NBA three point territory, making only 14 three pointers in 78 games. As a whole, his 0.8 points per possession on jump shot attempts were in the bottom third of the league, and he shot only 40.2% on no dribble jump shots, limiting his usefulness as a spot-up player. Turner struggled to find a comfort zone on the offensive end last year, which caused both his confidence — and his minutes — to fall.
A while back, I looked at some of the worst free throw shooters in the NBA and tried to identify what the problem was with their forms. Well, it occurred to me that I never took a look at the good free throw shooters in the NBA. Well, today I am going to take a look at some of the best free throw shooters in the NBA and their forms and picking out the similarities in each of them (sort of what I did with the three point contest last season).
The shooters we are going to look at today are:
Steve Nash – 93.8%
Dirk Nowitzki – 91.5%
Ray Allen – 91.3%
Chauncey Billups – 91.0%
When breaking down a free throw, there are four key aspects to take a look at in my opinion. The feet, the elbow positioning, the release, and the rhythm of the shot.
Not every shooter in the NBA has perfect form, whether they picked it up in a gym when they were kids or had a coach teach them, there are some really funky shooting forms in the NBA. Some coaches and shooting instructors try to fix some players’ form, but if you have success with it, coaches will leave it alone. Today, we are going to look at some shooters who have had success shooting the basketball despite the weird mechanics they have, and find the three things they all do the same. The shooters we are going to look at are:
Kevin Martin
When Martin makes the catch to shoot, he brings the basketball way down to his hip and then brings it up on the side of his body before getting the shot up. You would think that this would keep him from getting a lot of his shots off, but somehow he does, and he usually makes it.
If there is one flaw in Derrick Rose’s tremendous game, it is his jump shot. In his first two seasons, Rose’s jumper from the free throw line extended and out was so inconsistent (especially off the dribble), that it never was considered a threat. The reason a jump shot is so important for a player like Rose is because if he has a respectable jumper, defenders can’t just sit back and pack the lane.
By all accounts, Rose has focused on improving his jumper this offseason. Rose showed off the results of his hard work to a number of campers, and Docksquard Sports was able to obtain the video (link via TrueHoop). Here are a couple jumpers off of the dribble:
When looking at his form, a few things really stick out. The first being his wide base when rising up to attempt the jump shot:
When it comes to free throw shooting, a lot of it depends on form. This is because you are standing at the line with nobody covering you with the rim directly in front of you. If there is something wrong with your form it is really going to alter your shot at the line. Today I decided to take a look at some of the worst shooters and breakdown their form, looking for some things that can be corrected.
Dwight Howard (483/816 = 59.2%):
When Dwight Howard shoots free throw, it looks like he is playing darts rather than shooting a basketball. This is because when he shoots his free throws, it is all wrist. After he does his routine dribbles, he rests the ball on his shoulders, and with no knee bend or anything he fires the ball at the rim:
Howard ends up with a lot of line drives because he is basically aiming the basketball rather than shooting it. A lot of that is because he rests the ball on his shoulder before taking the shot. When Dwight gets his whole body in rhythm before he shoots it, he tends to make it:
Coming into the Western Conference Finals, Channing Frye was the X-factor. His ability to knock down outside jumpers was supposed to pull one of the Lakers’ big men outside, clearing the lane for the Suns’ pick and roll game. However, in the first two games Frye hasn’t been able to put a pebble into the ocean going a total of 1-13 including 1-9 from the outside. It has gotten so bad, he only logged 8 minutes in Game 2. So what happened to Frye’s shot?
Missing Early
Now, I don’t know if the hot hand theory exists or not, but I can tell you for sure that Channing Frye is a guy who needs to see a shot go in the basket. Channing Frye didn’t grow up a shooter (he had 392 3 point attempts this year, his second highest single year total is 33) and I don’t think he has that shooter’s mentality of “shoot until you make it,” where even though he is 0-10 he’s going to shoot the next one and know it is going in. In game 1, Frye missed his first three shots, and in game 2 he didn’t make a single shot, I think that really hurt is confidence and got him thinking about every single jumper he was taking.
I am not going to look at LeBron’s poor game in detail, because let’s face it, a lot of writers/bloggerswho arebetter thanme havedone it already, with my personal favorite being Kevin Arnovitz’s look at it. What I was looking for when I rewatched last night’s game was whether or not there was anything wrong with LeBron’s outside shot. I noticed a couple things that looked a little different last night vs. when he has things clicking from the outside.
On The Catch
In my opinion, LeBron did two things you don’t normally see him do on the catch. He wasn’t stepping into/through the basketball, and he was bringing it down on the catch.
In the third quarter, the Cavs really tried to get LeBron going. They started setting off-ball screens for James and had him running off of them. Here, LeBron runs along the baseline, getting a screen from Antawn Jamison.
