"Everybody wants to go to heaven; nobody wants to die." Improving individual and team shooting is a basketball Holy Grail.
What is important to you? Is it winning, minutes, role, prestige? Players decide which is more important, themselves or the team. If it's the team, then shot discipline matters.
"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment." - Jim Rohn
Shooting percentage reflects discipline and detail. What processes might raise shooting percentage?
Accountability. First, what's the hard thing? Holding everyone accountable, starting with the coaching staff to develop a plan, implement, track, and revise it.
Priority. Get everyone agreed (buy in) to an emphasis on good shots. Prioritize good shots and accept that the distribution of shots will be unequal. Everyone won't get the same amount of ammunition. Emphasize the Billy Donovan 95, too. (95% of the time, everyone except the point guard won't have the ball.)
Tracking. Without tracking, we don't know. "Measure what we treasure." The plan requires everyone to buy in. Every shot in every game needs evaluation based on range, openness, situational appropriateness. Shots off the catch have higher percentages than shots off the dribble. "Contestedness" counts. Close to the basket shots with defenders draped over you may be far worse than open 3s, even for mediocre shooters. Film doesn't lie.
Consistency. "Stick to standards" across all shooters and all opponents. "A forced shot is a forced shot." Good habits against bad teams turn into good habits against all teams.
Practice. Practice under pressure with defense, time, and score pressure. Practice starts with form. Dean Smith asked youngsters to "shoot the ball to each other initially rather than at the basket...concentrate on suggestions regarding their form when...not disconcerted by the end result of the shot."
Warm up your shot. I love Villanova's "Get 50" warm up.
UCONN's top group hit 175 shots in four minutes.
Shooting 3 x 3 x 3 is another terrific shooting/conditioning/communication drill when players fully concentrate, communicate, and run hard.
Use Kobe Bryant's "Imaginative 1 on 1" and track. If you want to be a "cleaner" then you have to practice cleaning.
Use part of scrimmage as "paint scoring only." Constraints put "iron sharpens iron" into place.
Make it count. In his book, Basketball: Multiple Offense and Defense, Dean Smith discussed scrimmaging with shot-quality dependent scoring. Count open layups as two points, open jump shots one, contested shots zero, and turnovers minus one.
Carril rule. Princeton's Pete Carril, author of The Smart Take from the Strong, wrote "the quality of the pass determines the quality of the shot." Better passing yields better shots. Take pride in the pass.
Board masters. I've recently shared the advantage of using the backboard at angles and inside twelve feet. Excellent shooters practice using the window.
Results rule. Points per possession ultimately reflect results, the gold standard. As an assistant, I didn't track possessions, but tracked shooting percentage. We shared TEAM shooting percentages, looking to increase percentages by calling attention. Over the course of the season our percentage increased about twenty percent into the thirties. Not great but acceptable for middle schoolers.
Success demands unrequired work, shared sacrifice, and strict accountability. Excellence in team activities isn't for everyone. Neither is winning.
Lagniappe: Hat tip, Coach Brooklyn Kohlheim
Focus on the main thing and simplify. "I see technology as a good thing, that is where we are going and it is a good thing. But you will probably screw it up first before you get it right." Doc Rivers had a '13 clip' rule.
Lagniappe 2: Death of Expertise explores the disrespect for expertise.
people no longer respect the opinions of ex-
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A New York Times review states, “To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything. It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.” Another review shares, "the emotions of the demand-group have become more important than facts of reason...and debate is dominated by "fake experts."
The expression we've heard is, "any idiot with a whistle can coach."
