Bad Shooting Drills – Jerry West was a great shooter despite this drill

The object of teaching shooting mechanics is to create good, repeatable mechanics. See the 4 part Blog There Is a Reason There Is a Nail At The FT Line . Some coaches go to all sorts of trouble to try to eliminate pressure of not making shots, by taking away the rim. They want to work on mechanics away from the rim, so there is not the disappointment of having correct mechanics and the ball not dropping through the rim. It’s a coach’s job to let players understand that the ball does not always fall through the rim. Sports are an exercise in failure and how you deal with that failure. If you miss 60% of the time from the three-land, you are considered an excellent 3 point shooter. It’s a coach’s job to help players deal mentally with the failures. It’s also a coach’s job to help the player understand that they will eventually be more successful when using proper shooting mechanics. It will take less work to maintain a “good” shooting mechanics then a “bad” shooting mechanics. I read that Kevin Garnet puts up 1500 shots a day. I admire that work ethic to get better, but wouldn’t he do better to stop catapulting his shot and do fewer repetitions to maintain that. Guess what; there is probably no better feedback then the ball dropping through the rim. It’s a coach’s job to teach players proper shooting mechanics at a range where they can be successful. See Good Shooting Drills below.

Bad Shooting Drills

1.Jerry West Drill
I’m not sure if this drill was really in the staple of Jerry West’s shooting drills, but he is usually accredited for it. If it was, Jerry was a great shooter despite the drill. The drill has players lying on their back shooting the ball into the air and then catching it. The object is to make sure the wrist and finger mechanics are correct on both hands. This drill is bound to give you poor mechanics with your arms. It’s well known that if you want the ball to fly high, your elbow should be above your eye. This drill promotes having your elbow well below your eye. We do not need another drill that is going to promote youth players chucking up threes before they have the strength and mechanics to do so.

2.Shooting at lines
Players line up so their shooting elbow will be over a line on the floor. They release the ball on their shot and see how straight their shot is by determining if it landed on the line on the floor. This one is plagued with issues for me. Kids will look at the flight of the ball, or stare at the line on the floor. Unless they are working with a partner how can they check out their shooting mechanics? Do you want them to look to see if the ball hits the line, and then look back at their hands to make a correction? Come on this is nuts. Don’t you want your players to train their eyes on the rim, and make their corrections there? It’s hard enough trying to get players include looking at the rim for their shot fakes or getting early eye contact with the rim. I don’t want a drill that is contrary to those habits.

3.Shooting at edge of backboard
Player stands facing the side of the backboard and works on shooting the ball and hitting the side of the backboard. I guess this so suppose to parallel the old golf analogy of the golfer asking his caddie where he should aim. When the caddie tells him aim towards the woods, the golfer replies which tree. Here is my issue with this drill. There is a perfectly good thing to shoot at on the front of the backboard, it’s called a rim. If you want a small target to shoot at then use the eye at the back of the rim that holds the net in place. It doesn’t mater which angle you are facing the rim, you will always find a front of the rim and a back of the rim, and at the back of the rim you will find an eye. Aiming at a spot on the side of the backboard, will not allow a player to hold their finish and look at their arms and hands and determine if they need to correct something. They will be too busy retrieving the ball off a weird bounce. This drill is limited to two players at a backboard.
4.Shooting at Walls
Shooting at walls, picking a brick out and seeing if you can hit that is not unlike shooting at the side of a backboard. Although you will probably have far more wall real-estate then the sides of backboards, it too means the player must catch the ball and take their hands and arms away from checking their mechanics. Yes you could let the ball hit the floor and catch it on the bounce while checking your mechanics, but it also has another flaw. Players will be aiming their shot directly at a brick. Maybe that’s why they call flat shots bricks. You are promoting shooting directly at the rim. Unless you are telling your players that you are shooting the ball in an arc so that it comes down and kisses off the intended brick, why wouldn’t you just use the rim.

If you want to use the wall, use if for passing overloads drills. It’s a great way to get repetitions for passing in. You can have players try to hit a brick or spot on the wall while using all different types of passes. You can have them use 2 or 3 balls while firing the balls off the wall trying to hit a certain spot. You can have them use 2 basketballs and a tennis ball or any computation of that. You can combine the passing with dribbling, or creating space to make the pass. You can number spots on the wall and have the player hit those numbers as you shout out the numbers. You can have the player face the wall and you can their partner standing behind them bouncing the ball off the wall as a reaction drill to have them jump to the ball to catch it in their core. Walls can be very useful in practice, but in my opinion not great for shooting drills. For more information on these passing drills email me


Good Shooting drills

1.Zero Points
This is an excellent way to start your practices. Include this as part of your pre-practice if you can. Players face the basket from at least 5 different spots and need to make 5 – 10 shots from each spot. The 5 spots should include:
a.Directly in front of the rim (1 spot)
b.45 degree angles (2 spots one on either side of rim)
c.baseline (2 spots one on either side of rim)

Players are working from a distance away from the basket where they do not need to include their lower body in their shot. They are working on their upper body shot mechanics. Have your players hold their finish on each shot, so that they can check them out to see of they are correct. I like to have my players make 70 shots. 10 in from each of the 5 spots, and the bonus 20 shots are banks from 45 degree angle. When working on the banks, I like them to get a real feel for the glass by working the shots in from different heights on the glass.

As with all shooting drills where your players are working in close like a Mikan drill you need to challenge them so they will not just move through the motions of doing the drill. Keep them focused by making sure they are always holding their shot mechanics and checking them ( hold your finish till it goes in or hits the rim) and by challenging them to make the shots clean (rimless, nothing but net).

Not only will this drill help your players warm up their shot properly, work on their shot mechanics, but I think you will find as I do, your player’s confidence goes up with their shooting. They get to the point that if they miss a shot, it’s odd. They can get 50 – 70 shots in, in a very short period of time without missing.

If you don’t have a pre-practice, start making up tasks for your players. Players left on their own will come into the gym, start talking and chatting with no focus and start chucking up shots from between half court and the three point line, or dunking before warmed up. If you have access to the gym before practice actually begins they can include Zero Points in what they need to get done. If you don’t have accesses to the gym have them do some of the pre-practice drills in the hallway. This is a little off topic, but include, all aspects of the game, passing, dribbling, shooting, rebounding. For more information see up-coming blog in pre-practice routines.

2.Shooting to the top of your partner's head
If you are still looking for a shooting drill that helps with mechanics but takes away the rim, I think this one has some true benefits. Players stand facing their partner approximately 15 feet away from each other. They have one ball between them. Player 1 shoots the ball to player 2, and holds their mechanics so that after the catch by player 2, they can help correct anything in their partner’s shot. Have your players aim for the top of the head of their partner, but in a way that the ball is going up in an arc and dropping down on their partner’s head. This at least gives the idea or concept at shooting the ball at a target but not directly at a target like the side of a backboard or a brick on a wall. You can vary this drill by having your players jump 50%, 50%, 75% or 100% while shooting the ball and observing the effects on the flight of the ball. Make sure it’s the catcher that is watching the flight of the ball and not the shooter. You can also have the shooter close their eyes, so that they can visualize, or get into the kinetics of the shot. You can also have them mimic bad habits, like bringing the ball back too far to the crown of your head, or elbow out and they can compare the two feelings an the effect on the flight of the ball.

There Are Few Assurances In Life - Part 2

Coming home from a tournament, my wife, my son and two of my son’s teammates, we found ourselves in one of those situations where there are no assurances. Snowy conditions and travelling at a conservative speed, an oncoming car came into our lane. In an effort to avoid the collisions, we ended up hitting the soft shoulder. The wheel buried into the gravel and we started to spin and flip down into a ditch. My son was asleep at the time when it all began and didn’t even hear me should hang on. He awoke as we were sliding down into the ditch. When we came to a standstill our vehicle was on the passenger’s side. The boys managed to open the door on the back driver’s side and get out. I kicked out the windshield and my wife called 911. My door wouldn’t open, but I got the window open. My wife then climbed out, over me. I unbelted my seatbelt and followed the escape path out my window. The Police, rescue workers, fire department, CAA all at the scene in a timely manner.
We were lucky. My son took the worst of the punishment, his back and neck are bothering him, but he is used to dealing with adversity. I’ll add safety to the list of things that have no assurances.

There Are Few Assurances In Life

There are few assurances in life. Your job, your relationships, your health; those things will be challenged. You may not succeed at all of them, but there is no excuse for not trying your best at making them work. There is no excuse for quitting. There is no excuse for not measuring your success by your effort.
Basketball is no different. Your effort is the only thing you can truly control. As in life, your very best effort might bring you great results, it may bring you mediocre results and it may bring you poor results. But if you work hard and are learning from the experience you are successful. Never disrespect the game, your team or yourself by leaving it to chance.

One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead
Oscar Wilde

I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life had been like if I’d just been myself
Brittany Renee

Chris Bosh we want to chill

I have to tell you I’m enjoying watching the Heat loose, and enjoying watching the Celtics win. LBJ’s commercials make him look like a fool. If he thinks he is doing damage control, from his Decision, then maybe he should stick to selling shiny shoes or maybe he should just disappear. You want to see some good juxtaposition, watch the version with Jordan’s voice dubbed over Lebron’s antics. Or Bosh with his statement “we just want to chill”

How is this for a work ethic? Ray Allen said, “In every practice and in every game, I am auditioning for my spot on the team”. “I am given the opportunity to earn my spot and prove I can help my team win games”.

The constant talk about the Heat just needing to get our team chemistry going. Are you kidding me? These are professional players, they can’t figure it out. It’s called sacrifice, and perhaps that’s the problem. When Kobe was on the Olympic team he said “coach l want to be the best defender”. This is a man who can clearly score the ball. He was willing to make a different contribution to the team to help the team be successful.

People give me Ray-Ray, give me The Truth, give me K.G., give Rondo, and give me Big Baby. You can have your King because I love the Working Man.

Coach Independent Thinkers

One of the primary goals of coaching should be to help develop the desire for players to think on their own.

As the coach you should have final say, but always encourage players to contribute their ideas. How can that be wrong? You are trying to encourage communication right? This is a form of communication. In a time out, I have to speak first. All systems have a hierarchy. I called the time out so I must have a reason. I need say what I need to communicate to the team, and then I encourage the players to contribute. Quick sound bites, you don’t have much time to do so. Sometimes your players will come up with a good idea that stands on it’s own. Kevin Eastman once said to me “you never know where your next good idea is going to come from”. Something someone says might spark a great idea for you. Sometimes they might have an idea that, you can build on, and sometimes it might not be a good idea in your mind, but you have final say.

Independent thinkers strengthen a team because they understand that different perspectives bring different ideas and solutions. Willingness to share ideas and perspectives makes for more robust solution solving and a true team approach. Independent thinkers must be selective. It is not productive to impede progress with the process of questioning everything, but they must have the confidence to voice their opinion.


Fostering independent thinking is the first step to creating critical thinkers. Once a player is a critical thinking they can access the situation to come up with logical conclusions. Encourage your players to contribute. After all it’s a team sport, and all should be contributing.

Dependent thinkers accept whatever they are taught and rarely question information or ask themselves if the information really make sense. Is this the type of player you want?

Practice does not make perfect.

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
Vince Lombardi

It’s true what Vince Lombardi said about practice. You need to learn form, and then steadily increase the intensity so that you are always out of your comfort zone to become better. It’s the same overload principal that body builders use to make muscles bigger. The catch is to make sure you are not creating bad habits, by logging hours doing the wrong thing. That is bad practice no matter how hard you are working at it. Not everything will be perfect in a drill. Maybe the pass isn’t quite perfect, maybe you bobble the dribble on your approach, maybe your footwork was not quite right and you should strive to get it right each time, but if it does break down, don’t go to the end of the line or the start of the line and start over again. Use that bobbled dribble, that imperfection in that repetition to simulate what happens in a game. It is the same as a broken play in a game. Finish that broken play. How many times to quick thinking players make something good happen out of a broken play? It happens a lot. The same holds true for a missed shots in a drill. Always finish, but finish game like. Fight for your rebound, and create a habit. Maybe the habit is to chin it, with a fake, and then put it up high to get the defender in the air and get it over the shot blocker. Whatever that habit is practice is game like and game speed. When you make a mistake just remember when life hands you some lemons, make lemonade with them.

What's In Your Head - Becoming A One-For-One Shooter

Have you ever witnessed the phenomenon of the player who walks in the gym jacks up a three pointer cold and hits it? This is usually followed by a small crowd jeering or taunting, and the player misses everything or nearly everything after. Or conversely a player with extra time to shoot because of good ball movement misses that shot, even at the pro level.

In both these scenarios the misses are probably a result of thinking too much. Too much going on in the players head other than automatically shooting the ball letting the practiced mechanics of hours spent in the gym take over.

Like all skills, being able to clear your mind and be in the moment and just shoot the ball can be a learned skill that can be improved through practice. Like all skills there should be a progression to getting to this state. You want your shot to be as automatic as dribbling the ball or breathing. You don’t think about either of those processes. It should be autonomic.

We want to move towards being a one-for-one shooter. There needs to be a progression in your development to become a one-for-one shooter. In a game you rarely get to come down and take the same shot, from the same spot, with the defense set up the same. Nearly every shot in a game is unique.

So how do we get there? How do we make ourselves a good one-for-one shooter? We need to come up with a practical guide for players that makes sense. A guide that is a progression of steps that incorporates both repetitions of shooting mechanics, repetitions for the mental aspect of the game and repetitions of game like shooting situations.


I think these steps will help.
Achieving proper mechanics
• There is probably no better place to work on your shooting mechanics then the FT Line.
• Zero Points – self coaching very powerful
• Practice is where you should correct your shot. This requires concentration and focus under the instruction of a coach with knowledge of shooting mechanics. In a game you do not want to hesitate.
• No matter how much you practice or how good of a shooter you usually are, there will be times when for a variety of reasons you find that you are having trouble making shots. Left untreated or reacting in a negative manner, these slumps can turn into major confidence busters and can distract you so that you are not effective in other aspects of the game either.

Achieving focus
• There are many programs available to helping players achieve better focus. Most of these programs use forms of meditation to achieve these states. I have used many of these programs to do directed meditations or hypnosis with teams I have coached. I believe it helps. Like any skill the players need to take ownership and practice this skill on their own.
Achieving confidence
• Like achieving focus, achieving confidence is a skill. More detail in my blog Is Confidence A Skill Achieving
Autonomic Shot

• Constructing shooting drills that are fast paced, game spots and game speed and one for one.
• There should be a progression.
• You will need to have your mechanics automatic. Putting in a lot of work does not make you better. Putting in deliberate work makes you better
• You will need to get many receptions in. It is not uncommon for good shooters to put up 500 – 1500 shots a day. Depending on the habit we are trying to create it could be deliberate practice over 21 days, or if you are familiar with books like Malcolm Gladwell Outliers it could be up to 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
• Once you have become efficient at hitting shots from spots, you need to now challenge yourself by hitting game shots from game spots at game speed. You can achieve this on your own or with partners. You can time your drills to make this competitive. You can make sure you are hitting 70% of your shots when they are uncontested in drills. You can combine these tow factors time and percent to make your drills deliberate.
• You add into your drills shooting from a different spot with each shot. You might be working on 5 spots, but make sure you move to the next spot each shot. This helps with becoming one for one.
• Add in defense. You must master one-on-none before you got one-on-one, but when you are ready, this will add another element that will help you become a one-for-one shooter.



Achieving Zone• The hallmark of flow or being in the zone is a feeling of being emotionally “neutral”. Having interviewed many players and reflecting back at my own experiences. I have come to this conclusion. Players all describe the experience the same, in that they are able to see plays ahead of the game, the game seems to be at a slow speed, that every shot feels like a winner, the hoop seems the size of a child’s swimming pool, but the emotional scale of joy are anger is always neutrals while this is taking place. To achieve a flow state, a balance must be struck between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. If the task is too easy or too difficult, flow cannot occur. This is partly why I oppose coaches who say if you want to get better you must play up age groups. I say when it’s appropriate. Sure way to kill confidence in a player is to give them a challenge they are just not up to the task of achieving. Can you call on this state of mind? I think you can do it more frequently then how most players describe it, including Bill Russell “it’s great when it happens, but it’s random when it does happen”.
• There are more and more books on the market about achieving Zone. I think the key to achieving it is tying some type of mental imagery to the sensation. I think through meditation and this association you are more likely to be able to call upon this state of mind.

If you are interested in One-For-One Shooting programs. You can purchase a 744 shot program that can be completed in 1.5 - 2.0 hours depending on the level of your players by contacting me.
Coach Paul paul.patrick@sympatico.ca