It is really hard to reverse engineer a jump shot.
I believe that the logic of “just copy what the best shooters do” is flawed logic. I’ll explain why.
One of the first lessons I learned when I started as a shooting coach was that you don’t always get what you want with a player. How you coach isn’t always about getting what you want. Sometimes it is just as much about keeping the player away from what you DON’T want.
Let’s go back to the idea of positive power for a second. As much as possible, we want shooters to generate energy either at the target or straight up in the air. We want to avoid creating energy that moves away from hoop. This energy will increase the likelihood of misses.
Another way of saying this is “I want you limit variables”.
Now, the game is full of variables. It is full of moments when the shooter isn’t in complete control. This is why we miss more shots in games. There are more variables that cause misses. It’s also why we make more free throws. There are fewer variables in that environment. And it’s why we miss more longer shots. The longer the shot, the more power we need to generate, and the more variables that are introduced to create the power.
So when we reverse engineer a shot; when we copy how someone else shoots in games and try to do that in our practice, what we are doing is copying them at their worst and trying to make that our best. If in your practice you are trying to copy what a shooter does when they are in a game and being guarded by great defenders (finishing off balance, rotating their body, using their guide hand slightly), then that will be your habits at your best. Then you are going to get into a game and a defender will force you even more off balance, or rotate even more, or use your guide hand even more, and the variable will get even bigger.
Your practice should be to try to make your shot as simple as possible. That is what pros are doing. In practice they are working to be as balanced as possible, rotate as little as possible, get their guide hand off as much as possible, so that the variables are limited in games. And sometimes the defenders will win in games. You’ll make mistakes. But we can’t be intentionally adding variables to our shot.
