You may have noticed something over the first few months of learning from me.
I never talk (or at least I RARELY talk) about “getting the elbow in”.
Quite honestly, I think “get your elbow in” is the most over-taught and least understood advice in basketball.
It is the same as saying “the pool cue, the cue ball and the eight ball all have to be lined up for the eight ball to go in the pocket” when playing pool. That is false. They don’t need to be perfectly lined up. In fact, they are rarely ever lined up and pool players still make shots all the time.
In this analogy, the pool cue is the elbow, the shooting hand is the cue ball, and the basketball is the eight ball. The hoop is obviously the pocket. In you know anything about pool, you know that it isn’t the angle of the cue that matters, but rather the contact point between the cue ball and eight ball. The eight ball WILL go in the opposite direction of that contact point, just like the basketball will go in the opposite direction of the middle of the force our hands give the ball.
Get the elbow in does HELP, because it forces the shooting hand to get under the middle of the ball, but it isn’t the elbow that is the critical part. The connection is the important part, not the position of a joint down the chain of command.
And there is another, even more important, part of the equation. We need the index finger to be along the target line when we release the ball. By this, I mean at your release point, the line of your index finger should be parallel to the imaginary line between you and the hoop. It can’t be across the target line in either direction.
Take a moment, and imagine you are holding a basketball in shooting position at your set point, or forehead height looking under the ball. Look up at your index finger. If your elbow is “in” then your finger will be along the target line. If your elbow is “out” your finger will be across the line. How far in do you need it to be? Far enough to get your index finger along the target line, but not across in the opposite direction.
Now let’s talk about why we need that alignment. If your index finger is along your target line as you are releasing the ball, then your finger will remain on the very bottom of the ball throughout your wrist snap. And since it remains on the bottom of the ball, the ball will go up and straight. But if your finger is across the line, then at the last instance before the release your finger will be on one side of the ball pushing in the opposite direction.
There are times that I will tell players to get their elbow in, but by the time I do they understand what they really need to concern themselves with, and saying “elbow in” is just a new way of saying the same old thing.
