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You’ve all heard the expression, “great touch”, referring to a player who made a basket with assorted bounces on the rim or galore such analogy. It’s genuinely a sarcastic remark, because the innuendo is that the shooter planned it that way, but it was actually a lucky shot or a series of lucky bounces etc. I want to elaborate on “shooting touch” and perhaps shed a lot of new light on this aspect of shooting. You may know by now that I don’t give much credence to the importance of the feet in shooting other than the 6″ bend at the knees and the feet must be shoulderwidth apart. I also don’t think there is a huge element in whether the dominant foot is more or less forward of the other or utterly square or directly under the shoulders. We have all known that since before the era of the “Peach basket”. Ever since I have been doing shooting clinics, I can’t recall any person ever telling me that the last thing they think regarding as the ball is freed from their shooting hand, is which portion of the hand dominates the touch and feel of the ball. By this I mean, that players are just not cognizant of the importance of the finger correlation to the ball release. Of course, I would say most players are totally unconscious of the hand placement or grip alignment on the ball. I am referring distinctively to the free throw here where a player has the time to do so but when you watch players on TV take their bounces or their so called pre-shot repertoire or routine prior to a free throw, you will be astonished how few players even watch the ball and ascertain rectify hand alignment on the ball before they shoot. Go in front I challenge you to watch and see if I am right. Anyhow, this is real important. This is when it gets into the nitty gritty. Since I just don’t believe that you may rely on the natural humane makeup to be a great shooter, I feel that our natural makeup is not perfective sufficient when it comes to shooting a basketball or technology accuracy. As a humane entity we are developed perfect, but when it involves external actions it all becomes subjective. We need the support of scientific criteria and physics to help the imperfect anatomical structure. The reason I know this is because I fit into this box myself. No matter how hard I tried to be a great shooter in my early days I never could achieve the efficacy numbers that I do in my later life because I have learned to shoot mentally and physically and not just physically. The shot begins cerebrally. It is a matter of mind over matter. Process over product. Beginning before the end. Alpha before omega. You get the picture. It is a fact that a high percentage of players think of making the shot rather than concentrating on the ever so indispensable mechanics at the moment of release. Now here is where the rubber meets the road. When we shoot the regular inflated ball ask yourself what you do at the moment of release. Why do you think most other players are any different. They are not. As a whole we have not been trained from the shooter’s perspective. We have been trained from the coach’s perspective. And how a good deal of coaches out there were shooters in college, or let me re-phrase that. How numerous were great shooters in college or the Pro ranks. Not very many. You see the gap we have to contend with. You will observe how much time I spend on isolating person fingers and their involvement in the shooting process. Well, I recognise that when I begin instructing my methods and mysteries a lot of players have a hard time making this adjustment of transferring their thinking procedure from the basket to themselves. It’s a total reversal from what they are employed to. Some make an easy transition, but with others it takes longer and that’s understandable. One of the key factors, if not the main element involved in shooting is to shoot the shot straight. And what warrantees the shot to go straight? The index finger does. There is a unquestionably dissimilar sentiment from shooting a flat ball and a completely inflated ball. It is hard to explain. You just need to undertake it. If you are a player that has a hard time connecting a sentiment from the brain to the ball through the finger tips then you need to try to shoot with a flat ball. Here is the sensation that you will feel, or you will have to feel. It is a natural tendency that when one shoots a ball, that the shooting wrist has a tendency to flail or at least to sway sideways. It is the weight of the middle finger and the ring finger combined that in general cause the sway. By shooting a flat ball you will feel the indentation more pronounced than with an inflated ball. The extra time it takes for the indentation to take place will relay to your conscious brain which finger is applying how much pressure to what share of the ball. This has to be understood, felt and corrected. Ideally, the ball needs to have even energy generated from the tip of the index finger down by way of to the wide base of the pinky finger and the wide thumb. This wide base will have to stay this way from the beginning to the end of the shot. All the while being cognizant of those 2 dreaded fingers (ring finger and the middle finger), so as not to let them dominate the direction of the ball. You closely have to see this whole routine in your mind and genuinely get it into the subconscious before you may genuinely make it work in your favor. This is a case where you in truth have to get in tune with the super fine muscles. If you may feel your capillaries in the tips of your fingers then you are on the right track. Great shooting in truth is a case of fine muscle domination and not big muscle control. Not only do you want to feel or control the energy generated to the ball but you have to recognise how much input to the ball that each finger delivers. The amount of strength generated by each finger needs to be accountable and measurable. Knowing this gives you the real cognition and feedback you need to repeat or change the next shot. Because that is all there is. THE NEXT SHOT. It is all when it comes to how well you get control of your physical faculties through total mental noesis and understanding. Shooting is not just throwing the ball up in the direction of the basket and hoping for the best. You may control the fate of each shot as you pull the trigger because you have genuinely calculated distances and direction because you now have a perfective noesis of these mechanical and scientific principles.
The percentages you will have to feel are 90% on the index finger, closely zero on the mid finger and pinky finger and in regards to 5% on the thumb pad and pinky pad. Just to give you an idea when it comes to faulty finger placement, I attended the 2009 NBA All-star weekend and in the Jam Session where everyone gets to have hoop-la fun. There was a booth called “Get-a-grip” and there was a display of a giant basketball with a hand on it. Down beneath there was in regards to a dozen balls with pro players hands embossed on the balls where people could match their hands with the grip on the balls. Well the bad thing here is that each ball and each grip had the mid finger in the center of the ball. My beef with this is that it promotes irregular follow throughs. The firmest share of the hand is the index finger when it is aligned with the inside of the forearm which forms an imaginative ruler or gun barrel. |
Great for display, just don’t bump it!