How To Become ELITE At Creating Your Own Shot

One of the biggest things that I get asked from players is how they can get better at being able to create space, at being able to create their own shot, and ultimately create separation from their defender. There's a lot of aspects of basketball that are important, but at the end of the day, as Bill Russell said.

This game has always been and will always be about buckets.

The ability to create for yourself and get a bucket when needed is a very valuable skill to have. Today we're going to break down some film and take a look at a few key details that you can start to implement into your own game so you can get better at consistently creating your own shot and creating separation for your defender. Let's get into it.

Now. When it comes to creating your own shot, you have to get it to the point where it becomes instinctual. And we can do this by first understanding what we're looking for, what advantage we want to create, and then by drilling it in so we can capitalize on those situations and hit the necessary shots that we need to hit. If you watch guys who are good at creating their own shot, you're going to notice a lot of patterns, and these are patterns that you can recreate to get similar results.

To create enough space to get your.

Own shot, you either have to make your defender move quickly while you move slow, or you need to move slow while your defender moves quickly. Let's break down each of these situations. Here's an example of Bradley Beal making his defender move quickly and then using that crossover dribble to come to a stop while his defender keeps on going. You, as the offensive player, have control over what your defender does. So by you moving quickly, your defender is forced to keep up with you and get up to that speed. Then when you quickly stop or change directions, he's going to keep on going.

For at least a step or two.

Which is going to give you the opportunity to stop and get your shot off. And the subtle detail that really is the key to why this works, and is that defender crossing his leg over. When he takes that cross step, it changes the direction that his hips are facing.

So sometimes I'll refer to this as.

Flipping the defender's hips. This is what you want to see as the offensive player. If he crosses that leg over and he's moving at a fast speed, he's not going to be able to slow down and control himself and contest your shot if you go up quickly. And all you need to do to be able to create that shot now is stop and let him keep Going or change directions and then take the shot before he's able to recover. Going from fast to slow can still.

Be effective even without turning the defender's hips. You can see in this clip, just being able to go and force your defender to move very, very quickly downhill and then coming to a sudden stop is going to create enough space for you to get your shot off as well. When your defender can keep his hips squared towards you, he's able to better contest and keep his hands up to force you to have to make a tougher shot. Which you can see with CJ McCollum in these clips that he misses. And we can see how this works in this clip against Brandon Ingram, CJ attacks downhill and forces Brandon Ingram to turn his hips, which takes away Brandon Ingram's ability to keep his hand up to contest the shot. Because he puts his hand down to try and sprint and cut him off, CJ can stop and pull up, and Brandon Ingram is late on the contest. It's the same thing here in these one on one clips. When they're squared up and have their hips facing towards me, they're able to contest the shot. So I don't have anything right away. But as soon as I'm able to get them to move quickly to the side and I get them to take that crossover step and flip their hips, all of a sudden that contest goes away. And if I can stop and quickly get into my jump shot, I'm going to have a wide open shot. So now you understand that the key to creating your own shot and creating separation to get your shot off is by changing the defender's hips. But there's more than one way to do this. Another way is by attacking their top foot. As you see in this clip right here, Draymond green is funneling C.J. mcCollum to the middle, which exposes his right foot as his top foot. CJ attacks that top foot and drives to the left, which forces Draymond to have to flip his hips to open up to try and sprint and try and cut off cj. And when he takes that cross step, CJ goes back into that step back. Draymond's hands are down, and it's an uncontested shot. Here's the formula. Cause your defender to move fast or turn their hips, and then you should.

Come to a stop or change direction.

And here you'll see James Harden working through the formula. Attack the top foot, go hard, downhill, and then come to a stop. And just working through that simple process is what creates this Great shot for him. And this is really where moves come into play. You saw James Harden that last clip go with that snatch behind the back to be able to create a shot. And here in this clip we see Luka Doncic use the inverted drag to do the same thing. Cause Clint Capella to take that crossover step and create a wide open shot for himself. Players will a lot of times ask me why the moves they practiced aren't working in games. And without seeing it, my reply to them is that most likely they're not doing the things to actually set the defender up so that a move would actually work on them. The most important part of having a move in your bag that you can use is knowing when and how to use it. If you don't understand that concept, you're going to struggle to ever use that move effectively. And it doesn't matter what it is. Another situation where these guys look to take a shot is when they come off a ball screen and they're faced with a big man who's afraid of the drive by. So typically they're going to be playing very, very conservatively with their hands down, trying to not get beat. And when those guys see that, they take advantage and shoot the quick jump shot. This might mean going immediately into the jump shot quickly, like you see Bradley.

Beal do right here.

Or it might mean creating quick separation by going into a step back or a sidestep. And the best scorers are able to piece all these little details together and use them in whatever situation it might be necessary in. And when you're able to do that, this is really where you see how beautiful the game of basketball is. CJ McCollum comes off this ball screen and attacks the top foot of the big man. Then when Javale McGee turns to try and cut him off and crosses that foot over, C.J. goes into that step back to create that separation and hit the easy shot right here. C.J. is going to attack his defender's top foot, which is going to force his defender to flip their hips and get their hands down. C.J. is going to take another hard dribble downhill to sell that drive. That defender is going to take a cross step with their hands down. Cedi can go right into the pull up and it's uncontested. For those of you who are going to try to implement this into your game, you may have to consciously think about doing it at first. You should make sure that you're consistently playing one on one so you can start to build these habits and work on being able to attack top foot, work on being able to get them to cross that leg over, and work on being able to go into a quick shot or a quick change of direction, move off of that. But ultimately, every player who can score at a high level consistently does these things instinctually. They don't have to think about when they're going to pull up, they don't have to think about what direction they're going to go. They know what works and what doesn't work, and because they've done it so many times, they're able to go to it right away without even thinking about it. That's the level you want to get to and that all comes through reps. So play your one on one, get this stuff down, build it into a habit and eventually you start to do it naturally and creating space and scoring.

Will become much easier for you.

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