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- 4 Steps to Becoming a Great Free Throw Shooter
4 Steps to Becoming a Great Free Throw Shooter
If you have ever
watched a poor free throw shooter who also happens to be a professional
basketball player, then you understand the liability that this can be
for a team. Dwight Howard and Deandre Jordan
both immediately come to mind of players who fit this definition in
today’s NBA. While both are certainly valuable players, they also
are unable to help their teams at the end of games due to their free
throw shooting woes.
The bottom line: free throws are important to winning games. As
such, you need to hone your skills, so that when you are shooting free
throws at the end of the game you will sink those freebies putting your
team on top. Here are four tips that will help you on your way to
becoming an 80%+ free throw shooter.
Have a Free Throw Shooting Routine
A pre-shot routine will help you clear your mind and
tap into your muscle memory, something extremely important to being a
good free throw shooter. Since my early days of playing
competitive basketball, I have always flipped the basketball with
backspin twice before collecting myself and taking the shot. It
is what feels comfortable. It is up to you to find what routine
feels best and then repeat it every single time you go to the line.
Think of Shooting Free Throws as a Chain Reaction
When you shoot a free throw you start by bending
your legs, extending, and then moving your arms upward until you
release the basketball toward the hoop with a good follow
through. Think of this process as a chain of events, where timing
is critical. The best free throw shooters have this timing down
to a science, which is why they rarely miss. While poor free
throw shooters struggle with making sure each link of the chain is in
sync.
Practice, Practice, Practice
One of the most enjoyable personal competitions I
have is to see how many free throws I can make in a row. This is
a great simple game for a couple reasons. The first is that by
shooting a bunch of free throws you are going to develop the muscle
memory necessary to be a good shooter at the line. Secondly, the
pressure of each free throw slowly builds as you get closer to your
personal consecutive makes record, which allows you to better handle
the pressure of an in game situation. Make sure to do your
pre-shot routine each time when doing this drill.
Envision That You Are By Yourself
This last tip is more about the psychology of
shooting free throws. When at the free throw line during a game
envision that you are by yourself shooting the free throw. Also imagine
yourself at the place where you generally practice your free
throws. This is often your driveway with your own hoop,
or at the local gym. Mentally taking yourself to where you have
practiced your free throw shooting will alleviate pressure, and you
will fall back on the important muscle memory that made you a great
free throw shooter in the first place.
By making a point to practice these guidelines, I have little doubt
that majority of you will improve your free throw shooting in short
order.
