This Is How I Would Become An INSANE Shooter (From 0 To 100)

I'm not a naturally good shooter. We all know players who, whether they work at it or not, can just naturally shoot the ball. Well, I was the opposite of that. In fact, I don't think I made a three pointer in a game until probably eighth or ninth grade. And I wouldn't even say that I was a good shooter until my sophomore or junior year of high school. So it took a ton of work for me to get to a point where I felt like I was a good shooter. And I never feel like I got to the point where I would consider myself a great shooter or a game wrecker or somebody that the defense has to face guard the entire game because they're that afraid of your ability to shoot. And funny enough, even though I haven't played a real game or seriously trained myself in almost five years, I'm a way better shooter now than I was back then. Now mind you, I had to work for everything that I was as a shooter. I spent a ton of time on this. I was getting up before school at 5 o' clock in the morning to go to the YMCA and shoot. And then after school I was in my driveway or I was back at the gym shooting. I would keep track of my shots. I even had like some of the shot tracking apps that I would use. And of course I probably used a million different online shooting programs growing up, but nothing that I did took me to that great level as a shooter. And it sounds completely backwards that now when I'm not doing any of that sort of stuff, I'm not spending time working on my own game and I'm not playing anymore that I would be better as a shooter now. But I've learned so much since then, working with thousands of players and studying the game and really diving deep into it. So in this video I'm going to share with you exactly what I would do if I could go back to my younger self and do it all over again. I know that I could have been so much better and I could have gotten myself to that great level as a shooter if I would have understood how to truly get better and what I really should be focusing on. So hopefully you can learn from these mistakes and be able to apply the things that we're going to talk about to your own games that you take yourself to that next level as a shooter. This is definitely one of the most in depth and important videos that I've ever made. So make sure you strap in here and let's get into it. So these first two areas we're Going to talk about might seem like common sense, but I think there's a lot that gets missed with this. And I know for me, I missed a ton of details when it came to these two areas that kept me from becoming great. So the first area we talk about is just mastering my form. And there's really three things that I think that I overlooked or that I didn't get right. And I think that was a big thing that held me back. So the first area we'll talk about when it comes to mastering form is hand placement. And this is kind of an overarching theme when it comes to everything we're going to talk about, but specifically with form, there is no one right way. Right? There isn't. You have to do it this way, and there's no other way to do it, because if you watch people shoot, you're going to see that everybody's a little bit different. And yet a lot of players get great results doing slightly different things. Okay. But the saying is, you have to know the rules in order to break the rules, which just means that we should know what the. What the ideal thing is. We should understand it, and then we can adjust and do it a little bit differently if that suits us better. So we'll talk about that. When it comes to this hand placement, I think is really important. What I say when I work with players is like, okay, we want to think about it this way. We want to take the air hole and split it with our first finger and our middle finger. That's going to make sure we have our hand in the middle of the basketball. And we want to put that guide hand, like, right in that middle seam. And then that also is going to allow us to make sure that we have our hand right on the side of that ball. The second area when it comes to form that is really, really important is rhythm and energy transfer. This is by far the most important parts of. Of shooting. And it's probably the most misunderstood and overlooked areas. And so as a player, I had no idea what any of that meant. Rhythm, energy transfer. I had no idea what that was. And it definitely sounds complicated, right? You're probably hearing that if you've ever heard it before. It probably sounds complicated. In reality, it's actually very, very simple to shoot. We transfer energy from the ground through our body and into the ball, right? That. That is at a base level, what shooting is. If I transfer energy smoothly, chances are I'm gonna be a pretty good shooter, or at least I'm gonna have the potential to be Once I get enough reps, if I don't do that smoothly, if I don't transfer energy, well, then I'm probably not going to be a very good shooter and I'm probably going to be wildly inconsistent. So the first area of this we're going to talk about is a dip. So catching the ball and dipping the ball right now, the whole thing with old school coaches, and I know I had coaches growing up who said this, and chances are you've probably had a coach or somebody say this to you where, hey, don't lower the ball, don't dip the ball, don't drop the ball. Catch it. Catch. High key pie. That's. That's the phrase that a lot of old school coaches have used. If you actually watch the game, you watch the best shooters. Everybody dips the ball, everybody catches it and slightly lowers it before they go up into their shot. And there's a reason for that. When we catch the ball, we want to go down first and then up because it allows us to build energy and rhythm. If you think about it, if you don't dip the ball, then you're likely going to shoot it from a different point each time. Like you might get a pass that's a little to your left, you're going to end up shooting it from your left or a little to your right, you're going to shooting it from your right or a little high or a little low. And now your shot path is never the same. So it's going to be very difficult to be a consistent shooter when your shot path is very inconsistent. When you catch the ball and you dip it, that dip is going to be the same pretty much every single time, no matter where that pass comes from. So allows us to build rhythm that way with our shot so we can remove it repeatable. And it also allows us to build energy by coming down first and then being able to bring some of that bounce back, that energy back up with us. And so that rhythm and energy transfer is a big reason why we need that, that dip right there. That's the first part when it comes to rhythm and energy transfer. And then the second thing you need to know is called sequence. Shooting has a certain sequence that we want to follow again if we want to be great at it. And it's very, very simple. The ball moves first and then our body moves after it. Right. If the ball moves first, it's going to ensure that we transfer energy through our body into the ball. When our body moves first and we get fully extended now all of A sudden, that energy kind of dissipates and there's nothing to put into the basketball. So we want to be able to make sure that we move that ball up first and then our body goes up, and that's going to allow us again, successfully transfer that energy right there. And that is about 80 to 90% of what matters when it comes to your shooting form. When we add in that hand placement right there. And one more thing that we'll talk about here, a drill that I like to use that kind of works on this and also with our hand placement is this drill right here where we can first of all get our hands placing the ball. We like splitting that air hole, getting that guide hand right on that, on that seam there, on the middle seam. We're going to stand straight out or straight up, I should say, like nice and tall. I always use the cue. Imagine like you're at the doctor's office getting measured right there. And then we're going to hold that ball out, like extend, bending our arms in front of us as if we were reaching out to get a pass. Then we're going to drop down to our shooting position and bring that ball towards us, and then we'll just go right up into that shot. This allows us to work on the energy transfer, work on that rhythm, and work on that hand placement as well. You'll also notice when you watch my feet here, that I do what's called a foot replacement. Really, you just think of it as like a little hop. And this allows me to again, use that bounce back on my way up. And now I'm more able to successfully transfer energy and efficiently transfer energy as I go up into that shot right there. Very, very simple, but it really helps us to find good hand placement and then work on successfully transferring energy from the ground through. Through the. Through our body into the ball. And this is something that every single player that I work with is familiar with. So if you're watching this right now, you. You train with me that you've definitely done this before, and I think it's very, very important. The third area when it comes to form that we'll talk about is footwork. Before I get into that, though, I want to share this clip from JJ Redick and Cam Johnson kind of talking about footwork, because I think it's very, very applicable to what we're about to talk about.

But I remember one of my coaches, my rookie year, it was before my rookie year, and I was just. I was shooting spot shots after practice, and he comes over to me, and he's like, you should plant your left foot before the ball goes there and then step with your right foot as you catch it and go up and shoot.

That would eventually stop your momentum every single time.

And I asked him, I said, no offense, but how many times in a season am I actually going to shoot that way? I might go five or six games without shooting with a left foot, planted, right foot. So when I shoot, when I would shoot spot shots, and this is what I. Drives me crazy when I watch guys shoot spot shots. They do the same footwork every time.

Oh, I'm big on that.

Every single spot shot I would shoot. And I didn't change it. I didn't change it. I shot a lot on the move, but it teaches your brain to just habitually and naturally do your footwork differently on every shot. Because every time I come off a pin this way, you shoot the gap. I got to do something different. My feet. I don't have to think about it.

I get asked that question all the time. And I had a coach in college that was very stickler on left, right footwork. So we. We worked it, we worked, we worked it. But over time, I became of the mindset that you have to have them all, and you have to have them all readily available, because in a split second, you have to be comfortable choosing the one that's the most efficient, that gives you the best balance, that gives you the best elevation, that gives you the best chance of making the shot. So if I'm doing spot shots before the game, I'll go left, right, I'll go right, left. I'll go step out, I'll step back to work away from the hoop. I'll step on a jump stop, or I'll just be feet planted. And my thought process is that I need all these in the game. I need to feel comfortable using any of these footworks at any given moment. So that's why I do it.

To your point, you can't predict which. What the timing is of a pass or whatever, and so you're building that in. Why is it all important? Because if I only practice one way and one thing is off, guess what? I'm not getting my shot off.

So when it comes to having great footwork as a shooter, it's less about having one perfect type of footwork and more about being able to use different types of footwork depending on the situation. Okay, this is called being adaptable as a shooter. That's a word we're going to use a lot throughout the Rest of this video right here. But we want to be able to use different types of footwork. So want to be able to shoot off of a hop, off of a 1, 2 and off of like a backpedal or sprinting into the shot. We want to be able to use different types of footwork. Getting into that, and that's going to allow us to, no matter what situation we're in, be able to make the shot. Okay, sometimes things aren't going to be perfect for you, and you still got to be able to make the shot. So when your footwork is a little bit different, are you able to still catch it, shoot the ball or take that dribble, get into your shot and make it. But getting really comfortable when it comes to utilizing a hop, utilizing a 1, 2, either left, right or right left is so important off the catch and off the dribble. And we're going to go through a workout in this video a little bit later, and I'm going to show you a drill that kind of works on this exact thing that we're talking about here. But having access to different types of filbert me comfortable with that, I think is really important. And it's something that I think that I didn't spend enough focus on as a young player. Right. I'd spend so much time on the 1, 2, which kind of like JJ Reddit talked about in that clip, where it's like, oh, I got to step into my shot every time, but when am I actually going to shoot the ball like that? Maybe sometimes. There's a lot of other times where I might have to shoot it coming off of a hopper or maybe I'm stationary and I don't have time to step into the shot right there. So we want to be able to do it in multiple ways. And like I said, we'll talk about a little bit more as video goes on. But that's that third area of format matters so much that I don't think I spent enough time on as a young player. So first of all, mastering our hand placement, mastering that rhythm and energy transfer, and mastering footwork, I think are three things that are so important to do if you want to really become a great shooter. So that's that first year. The second area, that's common sense, but I also don't think it's thought about the right way is reps. And so this is actually one of those things that I think I try to do really, really well as a young player. But I also think that for a lot of players it becomes all hard work and no smart work when it comes to that. And it definitely was for me a lot of the times over the past few years, I've been around a few elite level shooters, and really, when it comes to what separates these players from everybody else, it is an obsession, right? I have yet to meet an elite shooter, a great shooter, who isn't obsessed with the reps, right? Not like they like getting the reps up or they try their best to go and get their reps. Like they're obsessed with it. Like if they can't get to a hoop and get their reps up for the day, they like, they might explode, right? And that's something that all of them have in common, is that they have an obsession with getting reps, right? So if you want to be a great shooter, you need that, that mindset, right? And I know a lot of players who have that mindset, yet they still aren't great shooters, right? So it's not just about that. Now the passion for the reps is a requirement to be a great shooter. It absolutely is, but it's beyond. It's about more than just the passion for it. Okay? We can't just have the obsession. We can't just have the hard work. We need to make sure that we work smart as well and make sure that we're putting up purposeful reps, right? That word, purposeful is an important word for you to understand. The two words we've mentioned so far in this video that you need to remember are adaptable and purposeful. So two words we got to remember. A lot of players chase after numbers, which is cool sometimes. Sometimes it's okay to chase after numbers, right? Meaning they got to get 300 shots a day, they got to get 400 shots a day, they got to Get 500 shots a day. I just saw Karl Anthony Towns talk about how he shoots 1500 shots a day, right? We have all these players so obsessed with numbers, and that's all that matters is, oh, am I shooting more shots than that person? In reality, that's not really what matters. It shouldn't be the most important thing. If the most important thing to you is number of shots and not the quality, then it's not going to translate to game success. What I mean by this is that rarely as a young player did I ask myself, what are the exact shots that I will likely be shooting in the game and am I spending most of my time working on these exact shots, exact situations? For me, it was much more about as well. I Went and shot three shots today and that's what I'm going to do because that's what makes great shooters, is just getting the reps up and the reps matter. But they've got to be purposeful and they should be applicable to what you're going to do in the game and they should be something that you spend your time doing now. Unfortunately, back then there wasn't quite as many resources for understanding what shots actually do matter. What should I be spending my time doing? So I didn't know this and it really wasn't until I started to study the game because even now there's a lot of just bad advice out there. There's a lot of people who kind of approach it the same way that I just mentioned it, which is, oh, just go get up as many reps as you can. And while again that matters, I think it's also important and we can make it even more worth your time if you're also working on things that are going to directly translate to the game. So let's talk about a few things that matter. So we talk about shooting off the catch, driving kick, spot up shots. This would be like your typical like spot up stationary jump shots, right? That definitely happens, you know, games. But also we can work on driving kick relocation shots is also something that happens quite a lot where somebody drives, you relocate up or down, maybe towards the corner, up towards the top, towards the wing, whatever. And then you have to catch it coming off of like a little bit of a move now. So it's a little bit of a different shot. Those are two major, major, major type of shots that every player should be practicing. The next one will be extra pass threes. This is another very common type of three that you're going to shoot where maybe you're in the corner and you get a pass from the wing or you're on the wing and you get a pass from the corner, right? So now that pass is coming from more of a side angle. You've got to be able to turn and get into your shot as well. That's probably 75% of the catch and shoot threes you're going to shoot right there, those three things. So driving kick, stationary shots, driving kick relocation shots and then extra pass threes that those are, that should be a staple in terms of what you do when it comes to the shots that you're working on. But also we have catch and shoot shots coming off of like off ball screens. So we have pin downs where you're like fading out towards the wing.