How science is rewriting basketball wisdom | Hacker News Reader

How science is rewriting basketball wisdom

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38 pointsjamesbritt27 comments

This is not new. In gym class 20 years ago the teacher put in an old "how to shoot with Rick Barry" VHS. Proper shooting included a moderate number of revolutions and focus on the back iron.

Every basketball camp in the country explains how the bank shot rules described work.

Also knowing appropriate arc, rotations and place to aim are not bottlenecks on free throw shooting percentages. The issue is consistency which is bound by mental factors and shooting form.

I was just about to mention Rick Barry. He's outspoken for his insistence that his signature underhand free throw technique is more accurate. It very well may be, but NBA players are too macho to try a "granny shot", so no one has really tried it.

I don't believe that's necessarily the case. Free-throw shooting is a chance to develop your shot rhythm because the mechanics and form are similar to your shot during the game. There's a benefit to shooting free throws the same way you shoot jumpers. If you use the underhand technique you relinquish that advantage. not to mention you must learn a new way of shooting entirely.

Except:

1. It's already different because you can't jump with a free throw.

2. A lot of players seem to have no trouble handling both an ordinary jump shot and also a hook shot.

3. Even players who never take normal jump shots and have atrocious free throw ability never switch to the underhand style.

FWIW, you actually can jump for a free throw but it's sort of tradition that people don't.

The people who suck at freethrows normally have comically large hands which makes shooting from any sort of distance difficult. (Shaq, Dwight Howard, et. al.)

I'd really like to see some science behind this hand size -> bad free throw shooter statement. This is spouted all the time, and everyone likes to point out Dwight and Shaq. People seem to forget that Kareem, Yao Ming, and Shawn Bradley all shot pretty well from the foul line and were all significantly taller (and I'm guessing at least comparable hand size).

Now I'll admit that it is easy to cherry pick players on both sides of the argument, and players at the center position historically have lower free throw averages, but my instinct says that it has less to do with hand size and more to do with their shooting style/habits/practice.

Watch videos of Dwight shoot free throws. His shot is far from what anyone would call smooth. Now go watch Yao Ming shoot free throws. Smooth as butta.

When Dwight's shot looks like that and he's still chucking up bricks, I'll give more credence to the size argument.

Not jumping for free throws isn't just a tradition. Jump shots sacrifice accuracy to make it more difficult for defensive players to block your shot. There's no risk of your shot being blocked for a free throw so players don't jump.

If there's no risk of your shot being blocked for a free throw there's no reason to shoot overhand, either.

It's an easier motion for most people who've become accustomed to shooting that way, though.

Which is why instead of having a dunk and an ineffective overhand free throw, they'd be better off having a dunk and a less ineffective underhand free throw. But guys like Shaq and Dwight Howard are too "macho" for that, so they cost their team points.

I don't know about hand size having anything to do with it, but I do know that Wilt Chamberlain used to dunk his free throws in college before a rule change disallowed it.

I disagree with your second point. Most players who shot a normal jump shot well are not the type of players who shoot a hook shot well.

And your third point makes me wary. I'm not sure who these normal jump shooters are that have atrocious free throw percentages. They definitely don't seem to be the majority.

Read my third point more closely. I said players who "never take normal jump shots and have atrocious free throw percentages". I think you can figure out the guy I'm talking about.

To point 1: Your argument leaves out forwards and centers who frequently shoot set shots during the game without jumping. Also, my point still stands: the form is similar enough because they can practice their elbow, release, spin, and arc mechanics - all similar to a jump shot.

2. Yes, but some players don't have hook shots at all. It's another shot you have to learn. Granted, with the amount of time NBA players spend practicing, they probably could learn another shot easily.

3. I agree with you here. These players should switch. But reputation and ego get in the way; it will take a player of influence to break through the "underhand free throw" barrier.

The last player who did break through that barrier currently holds the NBA career record for free throw percentage. He retired in 1980. And he didn't have a bad jump shot, either. Food for thought.

Well I've heard about underhand technique and read about the science behind it. And I assume the player you refer to is Rick Barry, although he doesn't hold the NBA career record for FT % anymore.

I also watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4eJSjwlD5o

One thing to keep in mind is that even though Rick Barry achieved a 90% percentage, who's to say that others could achieve the same? The 90% number gets touted a lot but the number is from a sample size of 1, and from a great player to boot. Shaq could have improved his free throw percentage, maybe by 10 to 20% but I doubt he'd ever get to 90%.

Anyways, I agree that any free throw shooter in the 40-60% range should adopt the technique if at least to try it out. It'll probably take years to perfect however.

Many team sports could benefit from a scientific approach to management (Moneyball style).

But I think the real game changer at the individual, technical skills level is systematic video tutorials. Up until a few years ago kids could only learn tricks from other kids on the block or in the local club. Nowadays, there are free apps with detailed video tutorials on receiving the ball, moves, fakes, dribbles, shots, passes, tricks etc. Kids can watch the videos real time and in slow motion or with the different steps broken down and explained.

I'm not sure the author is a basketball player:

"Aiming for the center of the basket increases the chance of hitting the front of the rim and having the shot drop straight down."

Has anyone ever seen a free throw drop straight down after hitting the front rim? Seems like the only way to make that happen would be to throw the basketball baseball style on a line, and nail the bottom of the front rim. Even Shaq had better mechanics than that.

Are there no basketball players here? I was always taught to aim for the back of the rim and to make sure my arc reached the top of the backboard and to have backspin, and a million other tips (set your feet, square your shoulders, 90 degree elbow bend, stick out your ass, bend your knees, etc) that's far more useful than this article.

The traditional wisdom was 45 degrees, not 54 degrees, and even lower arcs are quite common. Also, the V is a slight departure from common wisdom. In basketball camp, I was also taught 1.5 rotations rather than 3. It's an optimization of previous information, not a revolution.

The only new tip I received from the article (I'd pretty much heard the rest before) is to make the peak of your free throw's arc parallel to the top of the backboard.

What I'm really interested in is learning how to dunk...all I need is about 4 more inches to do it comfortably.

Basketball is not engineering. Style counts for a lot, including the size of contracts and endorsement deals. Convincing players to purposely shoot ugly free throws that will bounce around a lot, but go in slightly more often, is going to be very difficult.

I think that Steve Nash, Jeremy Lin, and about three-quarters of the starting fours and fives in the league would disagree with your style claim pretty strenuously. Winning games counts for way more than style does. Not that Lin has done a ton of that yet, but he's the most herky-jerky player I can remember in a decent while and he's going up for an insane contract.

Nash in particular is known for the most utilitarian shooting moves in recent memory. I don't recall him hurting for money when new contracts rolled around. And one Shaquille O'Neal was legendary for both terrible free throw shooting and looking like a moron when trying--I seem to recall he did okay, too...

Shawn Marion has a wonderfully cringe-worthy jumper technique too.

Johnny wilkinson is a good counter example, even if he plays rugby, not basketball. Style is nothing, effectiveness is everything in sport. In fact, effectiveness informs style - there are now a whole bunch of international rugby players that copy wilkinsons daggy way of taking a penalty.

Wasn't there an article posted here about this very same issue with penalty kicks in soccer? Well, I'm not sure that I read it here, but I did read it somewhere: Someone did a mathematical analysis and determined that goalies should stand in the center a lot more often than they do when defending against a penalty kick. The issue is that they have to make their decision which way they are going to move before they have enough information on which way is the right way. If they wait until they actually have enough information for the decision, then it is already too late.

Their choices are to jump to the left, jump to the right, or stay put. Unless soccer penalty kickers are biased about which choice they make in kicking, you'd expect that the goalies would jump to the left 1/3 of the time, jump to the right 1/3 of the time, and stay put 1/3 of the time. Jumping to the left and to the right were significantly over-represented in the actual data.

The conclusion was that for a goalie's reputation, it is much better to jump to one side or the other and look like he's trying, even if he fails, than to stand in the middle and look like he's being lazy. For an important game, if he does that, and the kicker makes the point, and his team loses, it can mean the end of the goalie's career, just based on people's perception.

Or at least that's what the article claimed.

Edit: Ah, it was on the Freakonomics podcast. The episode in question is here:

http://www.freakonomics.com/2010/06/10/freakonomics-radio-wo...

I had some of the details not quite right above, but the idea is the same. The strategy being putatively underemployed is the kicker kicking it straight down the middle.

If you watched the recent European Championships, the technique of shooting down the middle--the so-called "Paneka" penalty--seems to be making a resurgence. The problem is that if you overdo it, the goalkeeper will compensate, and a Paneka is a lot easier to save than a well-driven shot to the corner. You might notice that fairly often, even if the goalkeeper chooses the right way to dive, he sometimes doesn't make the save.

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