Paul Hoover has studied 40 years of basketball film to learn the mechanics of the NBA’s best shooters. He teaches this thru his ‘Pro Shot Shooting System’.
Forget whatever you think you know about jump shots and shooting three pointers. Here are two videos which describe the basics of the Pro Shot shooting system:
Pro Shot System: The Release
NBA Pro Shot: The Hop, The Turn, The Dip & The Sway
These above two videos likely won’t convince you that this is ‘revolutionary’. But I think it is. What you need to do to be convinced as I am is watch more of the videos at Paul’s website, www.focusedshooter.com where he has tons of footage of many great shooters. He breaks down their mechanics and shows how all of them follow the basics of his system whether they realized or not.
My notes on his system, after watching every video at www.focusedshooter.com :
The Perfect Jump Shot:
The Hop (land on 2 feet) is better and faster than a 1-2 step.
The Turn – Feet turned toward weakside at least 10 degrees. This aligns your shooting-side hips and shoulders with the basket, and brings your elbow in. Your right foot is forward for right-handed players. Use a narrow stance, relaxed shoulders. Forget about squaring your feet to basket-that comes from 1930’s two-handed set shot. Squaring your feet leads to elbow being awkwardly outside your shooting line.
The Dip – Develops rhythm and power by bringing ball down to waist level.
1-Motion shot to a high release. (2-Motion uses a pause or ‘hitch’ during the shot). 1-Motion is more fluid and preferred.
Sweep & Sway – Feet land forward from where they take off, shoulders sway back (get power from the feet moving forward and shoulders moving back. Ie. Do not jump straight up and down. You should land forward from where you left ground. This can be practiced without a ball.)
The index finger should dominate and direct the ball by itself, not index and middle finger. End shot with high release and index finger pointing down.
Here is one more of his videos, this one describing how mechanics have improved toward the modern day.
NBA Myth: “Shooting is NOT about Mechanics”
Stephen Curry and Damian Lillard are two great modern examples. This is a neat video comparing Damian Lillard (great shooter) to Ricky Rubio (poor shooter)
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