If you are a good outside shooter playing in the NBA, you are going to garner attention from opposing defenses. So much so that it may be hard get yourself free for an open look on your own. Your a good shooter though, and your team wants you to shoot the ball, so that is why they send screeners your way.
You can’t just run off the screen. You have to set them up, run off of them correctly, and come off the screen in a way that you can make your catch and get the shot off quickly. There are three guys in the NBA right now who do this really well, and they are J.J. Redick, Kyle Korver, and Ray Allen. We are going to use their video clips to see how to properly set up screens and use them to get open looks.
The Set Up
Defenders know that if they are covering a good shooter, they are going to have to deal with off the ball screens. They are looking for these screens, and if they see them early it is very easy to get around them. That is why the offensive player using the screen needs to set up his defender. There are a few different ways that you can do this.
Walk Defender Down
This is something that Kyle Korver does very well. What he likes to do is walk his defender to the block (lulling him to sleep and putting him in a position that makes the screen easy. Korver quickly changes speeds, and cuts off the screen into a open area for the shot.
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:
I was reading through TrueHoop’s Monday Bullets, and I came across an article on Corey Brewer and his improved shot. In it, David Thorpe talked about how Brewer improved his shot. Some of it had to do with shot selection, but a lot of it he says, has to do with the lower half of his body:
And on the second part, the mechanical side, Corey was–and sometimes still does–he gets his head and shoulders far in front of his feet when he’s going to shoot, because he’s trying to stay low. But what happens is this: when you catch the ball and then try to stand up quickly, your head goes flying backward, and that’s kicking your legs out in front of you to counter balance your head or you’re going to fall on you back. So you kick your legs out–it’s an unconscious move–and therefore your balance is awful. Because you have poor balance, it’s very hard to have a great mechanic or stroke with your right arm, and it really threw his whole shot out of whack. So I actually talked a lot about–and I know the Wolves have worked him a ton–on just being more balanced and jumping straight up and landing straight down on two legs and not one leg. Not kicking his legs out in front of him, holding that form, and putting his hand to the rim and leading to all sorts of shooting cues that we worked on a lot this summer that we still talk a lot about literally every game day, almost.
This stuff looked familiar because the Nets had their own player struggling with his shot earlier in the year with Courtney Lee. The problem was also in the lower half of his body, and over at NetsAreScorching, I took a look at it in depth:
