| About the Author: As an athlete, coach and writer, Warren Witherell has been honored by induction in both the National Water Ski Hall of Fame (1984) and The National Snow Ski Hall of Fame (1998). Warren has won three world championships and set numerous national and world records in water skiing. He has been coaching international class athletes in both of the ski sports for 50+ years -- including 12 who have won a combined 25 Olympic or World Championships. In 1970, Warren founded the first sports academy in America at Burke Mountain, Vermont. One hundred alumni of this school have been named to the U.S. Ski Team, and forty to Olympic Teams. Warren has published two books and more than 30 feature articles on body mechanics, balance, and economy of motion in the ski sports. His books on snow skiing -- How The Racers Ski (1972) and The Athletic Skier (1993) have been translated into French and Japanese respectively and have had a huge influence on ski technique world-wide. Warren has conducted more than 400 clinics for coaches and athletes in the U.S., Canada, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Chile, New Zealand and Japan. A three sport athlete in college, Warren played soccer, hockey and baseball. He has coached all of these sports at the high school or college level. His Rollins College water ski team won the National Collegiate Championships in 1989. In the early 90’s, Warren played professional golf for three years on the Florida mini-tours. He has been a long time student of figure skating, gymnastics, and many other sports. Part I: There is an Elephant in the Room I should begin with the disclaimer that I have never played or coached basketball. For this study of free throw shooting, I believe this “distance” from the game provides significant advantages. In particular, it frees me from the limitations of “common wisdom” -- which too often restrict people’s thinking to only what can be seen from inside the boxes where they live. I will apply things learned from many sports to the discussion that follows. I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the UConn Women’s Basketball Program since 1995. Keeping up with the Huskies has drawn me into Division I women’s basketball on a national scale. For the past twelve years, I have enjoyed countless opportunities to expand my knowledge of the game and to greatly appreciate the skills of many extraordinary athletes. Throughout these years, I have focused mostly on understanding positional and teamwork skills, and very little on individual shooting skills. Most basketball shots are difficult to analyze because they are created on the run and display constantly changing mixtures of imagination and athletic talent. But free throws are different. Shooters have lots of time, no defenders, and a constant distance to shoot the ball. These factors make the mechanics of free throw shooting easy to study. I have long watched free throws just to see if the shooter made them or not. I have accepted each player’s shooting mechanics as choices made by the athlete based on his or her unique body build and coordination skills. I have made no attempt to analyze these choices until late November of 2006. What happened then marks the beginning of a five month study that has led to this essay. I think of it as a “journey” into the world of free throw shooting. Let’s retrace my steps. After the early games of this season, it was obvious that UConn was not very good at shooting free throws. Their team percentage was 61% after six games, and improved only slightly -- to 63% -- through their eleven game OOC schedule in November and December. Early in the Big East season, UConn ranked 14th out of 16 teams in their conference – hardly what one would expect from a team with the best athletes in the league, and some of the best in the country. As this made no sense, I became increasingly curious to understand how these exceptional athletes could do so poorly at one of the easiest and most fundamental aspects of their game. I sought a reasonable explanation where none seemed available. Thus, in late November, I began a focused study of UConn’s free throw shooters. This quickly expanded to studying their opponents as well. I began this study with an open mind and no idea of where it might lead. I was content to put on my coach’s hat and observe carefully for a while -- absorbing information until something significant became apparent. I didn’t have to wait long. After four or five games, I became aware of a close correlation between pre-shot routines and shooting percentages. (I consider the “pre-shot routine” as all the body movements that precede and are linked to the final extension of the arm and hand to propel the ball.) It seemed the players who bent the most at the waist and/or the knees in their pre-shot routines had the lowest shooting percentages. And those who stood the most erect and displayed the fewest body movements had the highest shooting percentages. Expressed in a more general way – those with the most complex body mechanics were the worst shooters. And those with the simplest mechanics were the best shooters. I knew very quickly that this correlation was “spot on” for the UConn team; and it took only a few weeks to confirm it was the same for most other teams as well. As I watched more games, and studied more shooters with a focus on this idea, I became ever more convinced that I was seeing clearly. I had a “prime suspect” not only for the devil in UConn’s free throw shooting, but in free throw shooting everywhere. It seemed clear to me that somewhere near half of all free throw shooters displayed mechanics that by the most relevant laws of physics and kinesiology were indefensibly complex. Could I be on to something that could help half the players and nearly every team in basketball to improve their FT shooting? If so, this simple idea would have very large consequences -- and would lead to some large questions as well. Here are the five questions I have most often been asked while working on this essay. The first question I asked of myself, and it haunted me every day for a month. “Is it possible there is an elephant in the room (or at the free throw line) that I see clearly but few others see at all?” This classic metaphor describes situations where something which is obvious to a few is simply not seen by most others. This applies perfectly to the subject at hand. I see about half of all free throw shooters using indefensible body mechanics; but most other observers, who are far more connected to basketball than I, don’t see this at all. To better understand this reality, I had a long talk with a very good college basketball coach. I began by asking what he taught his players about free throw shooting, and what he thought was most important. He replied that consistency, repeatability, and focused practice were the keys – with the consistency and repeatability applying both to the whole shooting motion, and to tempo. He never spoke of teaching his athletes to stand more erect or to simplify their mechanics. I asked him specifically if he addressed excessive bending and squatting. He said no. He added that he had been attending all kinds of coaches’ clinics for twenty years, and had never heard a word about “unacceptable mechanics” or “excessive bending and squatting.” He felt that most coaches accept a wide variety of personal choices in their players’ free throw shooting styles. Hmmm? I interviewed six more coaches and got essentially the same answers. Then I spoke with five “shooting gurus”-- men who conduct many shooting clinics and have marketed successful videos and DVD’s on basketball shooting. Four of these coaches focus on shooting in general and promote the same fundamentals at the FT line as elsewhere on the court. The fifth is a free throw shooting specialist. These coaches present well proven principles of shooting including how to hold the ball, using a square or open stance, coordination of the leg thrust with the arm/hand motion, location of the ball in the “set” position, the role of the eyes etc. I learned a great deal about shooting from all of their videos and recommend them to any athlete or coach who wants to be a better shooter. These gentlemen have far more basketball knowledge than I, so there’s no need for me to summarize their teachings. Their videos are available with the click of a mouse. (See Appendix A.) Pertinent to this essay is that all five of these coaches teach simple mechanics with an upright stance and only a small bend at the knees. I admire their positive focus when teaching; but I’m disappointed they don’t identify more clearly the amount of bending or squatting that is simply unacceptable and needs to be changed for half the players in America. They don’t identify the elephant in the room. Perhaps that task is left for old ski coaches to pick up. Question #2 (my favorite) was posed by one of the first friends I shared my theory with. She asked: “Warren, how stupid can you be? Half the people in all of basketball bend forward and crouch while shooting free throws. It can’t be wrong if so many people do it.” I love how this question ends with two declarative sentences! This “everybody does it” argument is often heard wherever “common wisdom” is challenged. I have long felt one of the best things about sports is that when someone has a new or better way of doing something, it can be proven right or wrong on the playing field. If common wisdom were never challenged, the following would be true today: All the tennis players in the world would still be hitting one-handed backhands. That’s how the game was played at country clubs and public parks from the birth of tennis until Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors burst on the scene in the 1970’s. “Proper form” be damned -- Chris and Jimmy hit powerful and accurate ground strokes with two hand backhands. What fascinates me, and demonstrates the power of conventional wisdom, is that golf and baseball have always been played with a two hand backhand. What took tennis players so long to catch on? Perhaps they never looked outside of the box they were living in! Had common wisdom never been challenged, NFL teams would still be running single wing offenses. There would be no multiple wide receiver formations. Three and four linebacker defenses and a great variety of blitzes would not yet have been developed. Why change from the single wing when every team is using it? If we followed common wisdom, women would still be banned from marathons and pole vaulting; and girls would be playing six on six basketball with three players per team confined to their fore-court or back-court. Once upon a time -- everybody did it that way. In summary -- In the world of competitive sports, the “everybody does it” theory is a leaky bucket that holds no water. The other three questions I have most often been asked are: First -- “Is your sample large enough to be valid?” When I first developed my theory about mechanical complexity as the “devil in free throw shooting,” my sample was indeed small and not statistically valid. But over the past 120 days I have watched about 200 college basketball games, 2000 free throw shooters, and 6,000 shots. When you add a few high school and NBA games, this is a large and valid sample. This said, I am fully aware that I can expand this sample over the next year and develop more refined evaluation and recording procedures than I’ve used in this season’s informal study. Second – “Aren’t your judgments about the complexity of each player’s mechanics too subjective? Might not others judge the same movements differently?” Well, yes. My judgments are entirely personal, and there will surely be critics. I welcome all responses and will listen carefully to them. I will especially appreciate comments from those who have more training than I in the relevant sciences. I am not a text book person. I am a coach and a competitive athlete with 60 years experience in body mechanics sports. I have a very good eye for problems with balance and economy of motion. There is an old joke among snow ski coaches that “Warren can see a tense muscle under a fur coat.” And I can – because that muscle is attached to other muscles that are not covered by the coat. Tension in one muscle always influences others. The last question I have heard often is: “Do you value diversity, or do you think there is an ideal way to shoot free throws that all players should strive for?” I place a very high value on diversity, but I don’t think we should be a slave to it. I fully appreciate that no two people are built alike or share the same coordination skills. No two athletes run or skate or ski alike, or swing a baseball bat or a golf club the same way. The most efficient mechanics may look quite different for players with different body builds or coordination skills. This said, if basketball players want to be the best free throw shooters they can be, they must choose mechanics that show a high respect for basic principles in science regarding balance, economy of motion and the laws of physics. You can’t dismiss the science without paying a price. I think an awful lot of players and coaches have, for too long, been hiding behind some cover of “respecting diversity” – while accepting a broad array of clearly inefficient body mechanics. Part II: The Mystery of 13-9 13 feet and 9 inches is the distance from the free throw line to the center of the basket extended vertically to the floor. Many people believe this distance is fifteen feet as the free throw line is commonly referred to as the “fifteen foot line.” It is fifteen feet to the backboard extended to the floor (and another 63 inches to the baseline). Why do so many players use one shooting technique from everywhere on the court except one spot that is 13-9 straight out from the basket? In warm-up time, players practice shooting from many positions on the court -- always using a base technique where they begin relatively erect, and in a quick, unified motion, bend their knees a little, set the ball, and rise to extend their arm & hand to propel the ball. Some do this with more fluidity, grace and repeatability than others. But no one bends or squats very far before shooting the ball. Then, these same players go to the free throw line to practice, and half of them bend and squat a ridiculous amount and shoot with far more complex mechanics than they have just used from everywhere else on the court. Where is the sense in this? Two questions come quickly to mind. First, why do the players do it? And, second, why do so many coaches allow it? For the players, I think a lot of the complex mechanics they use are a carry-over from how they first learned to shoot free throws. When they were 8-12 years old, thirteen feet and nine inches was a long way and the basket was really high! It took all the energy they could harness from their small bodies just to get the ball to the rim. So they developed techniques that provided the greatest possible amount of power. If you ask a hundred college players today to shoot from mid-court or beyond, virtually all will display the same mechanics that small kids employ from the free throw line – because they need the power. The sadness is that when small kids get older and stronger, they continue shooting free throws with their squat and bend routines; and their coaches never tell them: “Hey, you’re bigger and stronger now. You don’t need all that excess motion. It’s time to learn a more efficient way to shoot that will increase your accuracy.” But, most coaches fail to teach this to their athletes. How can we explain this? I suspect that for both players and coaches, extremely varied methods of shooting free throws are simply a part of the basketball culture. It is what they see on television every time they watch a college or professional game. It is what they have seen at every practice and every game for all of their basketball lives – whether that is four years for a high school player or 40 years for a veteran coach. This is the box they all live in. It’s a box where “everybody” (or at least half of everybody) shoots free throws with ridiculously complex body mechanics that nobody questions – because it has always been that way. It’s like living with a messy room or a cluttered garage – after you live with it for a while, it just becomes normal, and you no longer recognize the mess for what it is. Very few voices from inside the basketball culture are telling players and coaches to look outside of their box and consider the laws of physics, bio-mechanics, and kinesiology that apply to their sport. Perhaps this role has to be initiated by observers from other sports. I hope the information provided in the next few pages will help to get this conversation started. Continue to Page 2 |