{"id":42,"date":"2008-08-15T12:52:36","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T17:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/what-is-perfect-basketall-shooting-form\/"},"modified":"2014-12-22T17:05:40","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T22:05:40","slug":"what-is-perfect-basketall-shooting-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/what-is-perfect-basketall-shooting-form\/","title":{"rendered":"What is “Perfect” Basketball Shooting Form?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hopla11.jpg\"Recently, I received an interesting email about Dave Hopla\u2019s shooting form. It was in response to listing Dave as one of the shooting experts that we\u00a0interviewed in our new\u00a0Basketball Shooting Guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The email stated\u00a0that Dave Hopla did NOT\u00a0have great shooting form<\/a>\u00a0in the picture that was\u00a0displayed on our site (you can see the actual picture on the right).<\/p>\n

Now in all fairness, this is not a good picture of his actual shooting form.\u00a0 But this comment brings up a really interesting and important point about shooting the basketball.<\/p>\n

Here’s my response that explains what I’m talking about:<\/strong><\/p>\n

You know what. I thought the exact same thing when I first started studying shooting. I thought Dave Hopla doesn’t have that great of shooting form, but after studying shooting for countless hours and developing our new Shooting Guide, I have came to a NEW conclusion on basketball shooting form<\/a>…<\/p>\n

You don’t need “perfect” or even “great” mechanics to be a great shooter. You need CONSISTENT & REPEATABLE shooting mechanics. If your shot is the same every time, it’s easier to make adjustments.<\/p>\n

While I do highly recommend using \u201cgood\u201d shooting mechanics, you can also look at Larry Bird’s and Peja Stojakovi\u0107’s shooting form. Anybody with some knowledge of how to shoot would quickly notice that they had bad shooting form, yet they are arguably two of the top shooters that the NBA has seen in the last 25 years.<\/p>\n

Even though, they didn\u2019t have good shooting form, they did have the same shot mechanics on every shot. Now imagine if a coach would\u2019ve said to Larry after he won back to back 3-point shootouts, \u201cNow Larry, your form doesn\u2019t look good so we\u2019re going to have to change it.\u201d As the old saying goes, \u201cIf it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think us coaches (me included) get a little obsessed sometimes with perfection not only when it comes to shooting, but other areas of the game as well. We want the players to have the perfect defensive slide or the perfect passing technique. We forget that basketball is an art. There is no perfect way to do anything. The real question is \u201cIs the player effective?\u201d which pertains to anything in basketball.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that coaches shouldn\u2019t critique and help players make adjustments to become a better player, we just need to be careful and use logic and rational when doing so. If a kid knocks down 50% of his three point attempts, but his elbow sticks out while shooting, I\u2019m not going to be the one to change it. Now, if you have a kid with bad shooting form that shoots 20% from the field, you should try to help the player make some adjustments to his\/her shooting form. That\u2019s where coaching comes into play and where the top coaches\/trainers earn their money. They know when to leave players alone and when to offer advice to help them become a better player.<\/p>\n

And back to Dave Hopla, the guy makes about 98% or 99% of his shots. I\u2019ve never personally seen his speeches or shooting demonstrations, but I\u2019ve heard they\u2019re simply amazing and very few people in the world if anybody can do what he does. He\u2019s had demonstrations where he\u2019s made 350 of 350 shots while talking to the audience the entire time. If any of my players could do that, I couldn\u2019t care less how he shoots the ball.<\/p>\n

Some of the NBA\u2019s best players such as Kobe Bryant have consulted with Hopla. He is also currently an assistant for Washington Wizards. So I do highly value what he has to say.<\/p>\n

The end goal is to put the ball in the basket. It doesn\u2019t matter how pretty it looks. I know Dave Hopla does a heck of a job, so I\u2019m more than willing to listen to what he has to say.<\/p>\n

Recommended Resources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Baden 28.5″ Shooting Basketball<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n

What\u00a0are your thoughts\u00a0about basketball shooting form?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, I received an interesting email about Dave Hopla\u2019s shooting form. It was in response to listing Dave as one of the shooting experts that we\u00a0interviewed in our new\u00a0Basketball Shooting Guide. The email stated\u00a0that Dave Hopla did NOT\u00a0have great shooting form\u00a0in the picture that was\u00a0displayed on our site (you can see the actual picture on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,57],"tags":[55,56],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1728,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/1728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.breakthroughbasketball.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}