Shooting a Basketball

Seems sort of trivial to do a "how to" on shooting a basketball, you pick it up and shoot it at the basketball, duh. It may seem like an easy task but if you ask almost any good player today they will tell you that at some point in their life they were taught by someone, either formally, as in a coach or, informally, as in a friend or relative how to shoot a basketball properly. I will be completely, 100%, honest with you, when I first started playing I would use both hands to shoot the ball, a very typical form many children to adopt due to their lack of strength. When I was in about third or fourth grade basketball I tried shooting like this during a free-throw drill and I was horrendous and was pulled aside by one of my coaches and he began to teach me proper shooting technique and I haven't looked back since. Teaching yourself how to shoot properly can propel your game to the next level.

So how do you shoot a basketball properly? The rest of this article I will try to breakdown the necessary steps to shooting a basketball the proper way, so lets get right into it. 

The first part of this deals with your shot stance and how you hold the ball just prior to taking a shot.

Step 1. Make sure you have a good stance when shooting the basketball. If your stance is week it makes it hard to get a good feeling shot off. If you keep your legs locked you are more prone to becoming off balance, and even though some of these NBA players make off-balance shots look easy, for most people they are not. So make sure you stagger your feet slightly with your dominant foot slightly forward. Now I tend to have my dominant foot pointing towards the hoop with my other foot pointed at about a 45-degree angle from my other dominant one. This may not be how you choose to, as some prefer to have both feet pointing at the hoop, this is up to you, whatever feels comfortable.

Step 2. Make sure you hold the ball correctly. Much like a football, how you hold the basketball is important, it isn’t recommended to throw a football without your fingers on the seam so try and shoot a basketball with your fingers perpendicular with the grooves on the ball for the best grip.

Step 3. You want to hold the ball in the correct position before you raise it to shoot it; we call this the “shot pocket”. The proper position to hold the ball is a few inches above the waist on your shooting side, if you are a lefty it is your left side and vice versa for righties, with your elbow directly under the ball. Some shooters hold the ball almost directly in front of their chests and this isn’t necessarily wrong, as it requires more distance for the ball to travel for their shot.

These next few steps deal with the best part of shooting a basketball, the shot itself!

Step 4. Begin the shooting motion by pushing the ball upwards from your “shot pocket” with your shooting hand. Now where you release the ball is another “feeling” part of the shot. I was always taught to release it about eye level, which if you are comfortable with this then it’s a good technique to work on, but I chose to raise the ball slightly higher than my head, almost directly above it. I opted for this technique to add some arc to my shot. I encourage you to find a release point that works for you and practice it as much as possible.

Step 5. With each shot you are going to want to jump a little bit, the only exception to this is on free throws, which most shooters remain stationary for. The slight jump in a jump shot is used to help you propel the ball towards the hoop in conjunction with the release of your shot (which is the next step). Now I emphasize that this is a SLIGHT jump, you aren’t trying to jump out of the gym with this one, save that for your dunks if you are lucky enough to be able to do that.

Step 6. It has all come down to this final step, the release. The release of the basketball should take place right before you reach the height of your jump from the last step. This is the optimal release for most people and it eliminates the possibility that you release the shot on the way down, which could end up in an extremely awkward shot. When you release the basketball you want to straighten your arm and flick your wrist in one fluent motion, propelling the ball towards the hoop. This should put an “arc’ on your shot which is vital in getting the ball over the front of the rim. After you flick your wrist be sure to hold the follow through, it helps the ball movement and plus it looks awesome!

If all goes according to plan and you follow these 6 rather simple steps you should see the ball touch nothing but net and hear that beautiful sound of the snap of the net.

After you have gotten these steps figured out there is a bonus step for you to follow

Step 7 (Bonus Step). Practice, practice, practice. Shooting a basketball isn’t something that is going to be perfect the second after you shoot the shot properly the first time. You are going to need to practice and then practice some more to get really good at mastering your shot. There is something called muscle memory, which is developed through tons of practice. It makes it so when you go to shoot in game you don’t have to stop and think of all 6 of these steps before you shoot, your body remembers them already! It is best to practice your shot by yourself as much as you can before you decide to take to the court and use it in a game.

I hope you enjoyed this article on how to shoot a basketball and I hope it brings you success in your future basketball endeavors!

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