3 Finishes EVERY Guard Needs (Score More Points!)

If you want to be a great scorer, being able to finish around the rim is super important. But here's the bad news. If you're a guard, this is probably the most difficult thing to do on offense. As a guard, you're going to have a lot of advantages. Sometimes it might be a speed or quickness advantage, sometimes it may be a skill advantage. And a lot of times those skills are very, very valuable in the perimeter where you have a lot of space to work with. But when you get into the pain, that space goes away. And a lot of times you're going to be surrounded by players who are taller or longer than you. So you need to find other ways to create advantages. And so in this video, we're going to go through three finishes that are going to help you become way more successful finishing around the R and help take your scoring to the next level. Let's get into it. One of the biggest problems that you'll run into as a guard trying to finish around the rim is shot blockers. And the biggest advantage that a shot blocker has is timing. So generally as you're driving, they're timing up when to jump so they can block your shot. So if you're able to throw off their timing, you're going to throw off their ability to block you. So the first finish we're going to talk about is the off foot finish or the goofy foot finish. The number one way that shot blockers time you up is by looking at your feet and trying to anticipate when you're going to jump. So by going with an off foot finish, we're able to throw off this timing because generally they expect you to go off of the inside foot. And, and if you watch any guard, especially undersized guards who get to the rim with any sort of regularity, you're going to see them get to this finish all the time. Because not only does it throw off their primary defenders timing when it comes to trying to contest them, but it also throws off that rotating help defender as well. So when is this finish effective? The first situation is when you have your primary defender who's maybe trailing you or on your hip and they're trying to time you up to contest or block your shot. By getting to this off foot finish, you're able to catch them off guard and, and typically catch them when they haven't timed it up right and you're going to be able to get that layup off. The second situation where this can be effective is when you see that help defender starting to Rotate over. They're immediately starting to time you up and looking at your feet. So getting to this off foot finish is a great way to neutralize that rotating defender. The next type of finish that every guard needs to have is an off timing finish. Again, we're targeting throwing off the defender's timing here, but now we're going to do it a couple different ways. The first way we can get to an off timing finish is by getting to an up and under. By doing this, you can typically bait that defender into jumping early. And by the time you get to that under into your actual finish, that defender is out of the play. The next way we can get to an off timing finish is by getting to more of a hang on our finish. So this involves going up for your finish and not letting go of the ball right away, but hanging and letting that defender pass by and then shooting the ball on your way down. Now this takes a lot of body control to do, but if you can work on and get to a point where you can incorporate into your finishing, it's going to make it so much harder for defenders to time you up and block you because you can just wait for them to pass by and shoot the ball. Isaiah Thomas was 5 foot 9 and still able to be, for all intents and purposes, an average finisher in the NBA, which is incredibly impressive for somebody who's that size. And he was able to do this largely because of his ability to hang in the air, create contact through his different veers, and ultimately be able to throw off time in because of this ability to hang in the air. And the third finish that every guard needs is the two foot finish. The two for finish gives you a lot of different options and allows you to be more in control than you can be off of one foot. The first thing the tuba finishing allows you to do is stop yourself. Get different shot fakes and step throughs and pivots. And this is a great way to neutralize that shot blocker by getting them up in the air and you can essentially completely take them out of the play. You can also use two foot finishing to be able to handle contacts more much better. Being on two feet allows you to be more balanced and under control. And by utilizing what's called a stride stop where you're stepping with your outside foot and then your inside foot and going up above two feet. This allows you to be able to handle contact because your momentum is going into the defender. So if you find that you aren't able to handle contact or finish through contact very well. Incorporate the stride stop into your finishing and watch how much better you're going to get at it. And then get comfortable with not going up the first time every time, but sometimes giving a shot fake, sometimes pivoting and finding a better option. You're going to become much more difficult to stop in the pain. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you click the top link in my description below to get my free Leap Perimeter Score workout. Drop a like and subscribe. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.