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.

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Last week, Kate Fagan of Philly.com reported that Evan Turner was working with Herb Magee, also known as The Shot Doctor, looking to improve his shooting, and to be completely honest, Turner needs the work.  Turner, who isn’t the quickest wing player, needs that shooting threat to force the defense to respect it and close out/play closer to him.  Once that starts happening, that is when Turner can use that shooting threat to help him get to the rim and become an even better player.  For that to happen, he needs to knock down shots consistently and turn into a threat, something he couldn’t do his rookie season.  According to Synergy Sports, Turner shot just 37.4% on all jump shots (37.1% on shots inside 17 feet, 38.8% on shots outside 17 feet but inside the three point line, and 33.3% behind the three point line).

So what is Turner working on?  Well according to Fagan’s report, he was working on one specific thing having to do with his off-hand:

If you’ve made it this far in the blog post then you’re a Sixers fan and you watched enough games last year to know Turner needed some basic adjustment on his shot. He’s not a bad shooter, not by any stretch, but there were times his confidence seemed to affect his mid-range shot and there are some obvious corrections needed on his mechanics. Yesterday, Turner and Magee worked on the first of those changes: Turner’s placement of his off hand. Turner’s shooting hand is actually quite sound. He holds the ball correctly, keeps his shooting elbow in, and releases the ball off the correct fingers. On occasion, he snaps back instead of holding his follow through, but for the most part his shooting hand is not the issue. That information should relieve Sixers’ fans.

So what is the problem with Turner’s offhand?  The position it is placed on the basketball.  As a shooter, you want to use your off hand to hold the ball in place, but not to have it involved in the shot.  It should be still on the side of the basketball as the strong hand goes through the shooting motion.  What Turner does is he places the basketball right on top of the ball:

With the way Turner’s off-hand is positioned, there is no way that he can keep it from being involved with the shot and Turner is essentially shooting with two hands.  This release effects the shot because it effects the rotation, and any shooter can tell you if your rotation is off, your aren’t going to get those really good bounces.  Here is Turner’s shot live and slowed down so you can really see the effect of his off hand on his shot:

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Taking a quick break from out playoff previews, I was working with ESPN’s The Association in the background when something caught my attention. Ray Allen talking about shooting mechanics. When this came on, I had to stop what I am doing and watch. It is just 90 seconds worth of video, but it is so awesome that I had to post it here (credit goes to the amazing jose3030 for posting the original video where I pulled it from)

Amazing. If you are learning the game or are still playing, you need to watch this over and over.

The three point contest is a great event for fans of outside shooting.  You have some of the best three point shooters in the game taking shots over and over, and it really lets you break things down.  After watching the event, I came away impressed with one shooter in particular, and that shooter was James Jones.

Now we all know James Jones as the guy who may be benefitting the most from playing along side James, Wade, and Bosh, and that might diminish everyone’s opinion about him and his shooting ability (He only gets wide open shots).  However, Jones is actually a very good shooter (40% career three point shooter) with fantastic mechanics.  I came away so impressed with Jones that I thought his stroke needed to be broken down:

Arm/Hand Position

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In late December, I put together a post for Basketball Prospectus looking at Derrick Rose, his new jumper, and his unwillingness to use it in the mid range.  Up until that point, Rose would much rather settle for his floaters/runners in the midrange, leading to some poor shooting numbers from those locations.  As I wrote in December:

His shooting from 16 to 23 feet has dropped from 44 percent last year to 41 percent last year. From 10 to 15 feet, it is even worse. Rose’s shooting percentage from that area on the court has gone from 50 percent last year to 27.5 percent this year.

Things are starting to change as Rose is beginning to trust his new jumper more and more, with last night being a perfect example.  According to new TrueHoop affiliate Hoopdata.com, Rose shot 9 for 13 from the midrange locations (3-3 from 10-15 feet/6-10 from 16-23 feet), which is right around 69% shooting.  The reason is because he is actually getting his feet set and is taking jumpers:

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So far this season, Dwight Howard is still struggling from the free throw line.  In fact, Howard is shooting the worst he has ever shot from the free throw line, only hitting on 57.9% of his foul shots this year (his previous worse 58.6% in ’06/’07).  However, this year Dwight Howard seems to less consistant when it comes to missing free throws.  Instead of just being bad game in and game out, Howard has put together some solid Free Throw shooting games.  72% on 1/17 against Boston (13-18), 75% on 1/28 against Chicago (12-16), and most recently yesterday against Boston Howard shot 80% from the foul line (8-10).  If Howard has had some good games, then why is his Free Throw percentage so low?  Well, because he seems to match every good game with a terrible one.

I decided to look at Howard’s free throw form from a very good game (his 8-10 performance yesterday) and a very bad game (his 3-13 performance against Miami on 2/3), and wouldn’t you know, I found a small, but in my opinion, important difference.’

During games where Howard struggles from the line, everything is the same in his form except for one thing.  He tends to short-arm his shots and the result is a little hitch in his release.  When he is shooting well, everything is smooth from the set up to the follow through.

Instead of showing a video each of Howard’s release, I decided to put it together in one video side by side.  He is wearing his black jersey on the miss clip and his blue jersey on the make clip.  You want to focus on Howard’s strong hand from when he releases the ball to his follow through:

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In addition to a good base, proper shooting motion, and a solid release one of the most important things for a good shooter to master in the NBA is moving into open areas or “spotting up.”

It is important because if you stand in one spot waiting for the basketball, you are never going to be open.  When a shooter’s defender helps, even a short slide from the top of the key to the wing gives him enough space to get a shot off.  We saw a perfect example of this during last night’s Blazers-Nuggets game.

Rudy Fernandez gets the ball kicked out to him at the top of the key and he quickly swings it to Nicolas Batum.  Batum takes advantage of the defense closing out on him and penetrates, attacking the lane.

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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.

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Doing a little college basketball stuff, I came across Obi Muonelo, who plays for Oklahoma State.  Looking at his stats, I was amazed to see that Muonelo was only a 58.9% free throw shooter, despite being a 42.6% three point shooter.  I took my amazement to Twitter, and the great Tom Haberstroh let me know that this happens in the NBA too:

Happens in NBA too… http://3.ly/5GCg RT @SebastianPruiti How can someone who shots 42.6% from the 3 only shoot 58.9 FT%? http://3.ly/Q5mS

Tom’s list is an all-time single season list (and Bruce Bowen is featured a ton there), and it got me thinking.  I decided to use this past season and take a look at above average three point shooters with at least 100 attempts (35.6%) and try to figure out why they are below average free throw shooters (76.2%).  Looking at these guys (you can find the full list here) three point attempts and their foul shots, I came to the conclusion that there are three main reasons why this happens.  They include not getting to the line enough and jump shooters struggling with a set shot from the line.

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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.

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