Shooting-The First and Greatest Fundamental of Basketball

I've been wanting to say this for some time but haven't had the guts to since we were still in the playoff hunt. Now that we are out of it, I think it needs to be said.

This crazy game of basketball is all about putting the ball in the hoop, I'm sorry. You can say defense wins championships. I'll say that the team that outscores it's opponents wins. You can say that good passing wins. I say that good passing is great as long as there is a shooter that can put the ball in the hoop at the end of that pass.

In the NBA, teams are considered to be great defensive teams if they "hold" their opponents to 80 points a game. That fact alone should tell us that we should place a premium on shooting. If the best defensive teams allow 80 ppg, then obviously shooting is a REQUIREMENT, not an option, not an extra. I don't care if it's a free throw, a layup, a 3 pointer, a mid range jumper, or a dunk shot, you've got to be able to shoot it.

And every coach should know where each of their player's shooting efficiency lies. Are they most efficient from 3 point land, or driving into traffic and laying it in, drawing contact and the foul, or are they most efficient from mid-range, or are they most efficient cleaning up the garbage and throwing it down?

Then when you design an OFFENSIVE system, you put the players in the appropriate places. You spot up the 3 point shooters, you give the dribble-penetrator the basketball, you put the garbage man down low, you have your mid-range shooter set picks and pop out for the mid-range jumper. Don't have a dribble-drive penetrator spotting up to shoot the 3 when they can't shoot it. Don't have your dunker/finisher setting screens at the 3 point line and then waving for the bball from 17 feet away. Don't have your undersized shooting guard posting up at the elbow.

What you cannot afford to do, especially in the NBA, is have 2 or 3 guys on the floor together who cannot SHOOT. You cannot have 2 or 3 low efficiency shooters on the floor and expect to win anything, I don't care how much defense they play. They will only win when they face a team with 2 or 3 players on the floor that are less efficient shooters than they are. And that's not going to happen too many times in the Association.

There is a reason that there are no teams that win championships that cannot shoot efficiently. There is a reason that there is only maybe a handful of players at most in the Hall of Fame who were defensive catalysts and could not shoot. There is a reason that guys that play defense but can't shoot get drafted later in the draft or skipped over altogether. There is a reason that coaches like Rudy T win championships and concentrate so much on having shooters on their roster while other coaches languish in mediocrity because they are looking for the ideal defenders to play that mystical defense that can shut out the other team. There is a reason why even the most defensive of championship teams still put 5 guys on the floor that can shoot it from their spot and they shoot it from their spot. There is a reason why their benches are loaded with guys that can put the ball in the basket.

Shooting is the first and greatest skill that players should be practicing in their formative years, more than dribbling, more than slapping the floor and moving their feet, more than passing. They should be honing their shooting skills. They'll get plenty of coaching to pass, rebound, and play defense. They won't get shortchanged in that area.

I still go back to the Philly game a couple months back. Here we are fighting uphill for our playoff lives and we are in a tug of war with Allen Iverson. It did not matter who we put on him, he was going to get the shot and it was going in. He could not be stopped. We fought tooth and toenail to get into that ballgame and then we were trading punches with them going down the stretch. Horn sounds and in walks Ryan Bowen, in what I would consider the most crucial point of our season up to that point. We had to have that win to maintain our momentum as we charged toward .500. In a game where we are having to trade baskets and hope they miss, we bring in a walking brick thrower. You could see it coming a mile away. His defensive man walks off and leaves him to double Yao. Ball goes right to Bowen for the wide open 18 footer and I do mean wide open. Nobody was even running out to him. There was no need to. Clang, run out, layup on the other end, game effectively over. Sigh, you have got to be able to shoot.

Shooting is a skill honed by countless hours of repetition. The greatest component of good shooting is repetitive shooting drills hour after hour after hour day after day after day. If you haven't learned to shoot by the time you get to the NBA, you may be able to improve your shooting incrementally but not majorly. There is not enough time during the season for a player to learn to be a good, efficient shooter. And a player has already lost all that time while he was developing playing HS and college all to practice his shooting until he became efficient.

That's why you can't load the roster up with defensive, hustle-scrap-bang type players that cannot shoot and expect that they are going to improve their shooting. They won't. In fact, in a defensive system like Van Gundy runs, shooting is even more critical than on a team like Phoenix because Van Gundy demands so much of his team defensively. You take a player that can't shoot good, and then dog out his legs on the defensive end and then when you come down to the offensive end, can we really expect much more than maybe 35% from the field? That's why you have to have excellent shooters under a Van Gundy type coach. Because by the time he is through with them defensively, they are automatically going to lose 5-10 percentage points of accuracy from dead legs. They'd better know how to shoot.

The greatest coaches that have the best strategy and the best offensive systems are rendered average if they don't have players that can put the ball in the basket. How many times this season did we see Van Gundy draw up a play that worked........except it wasn't finished? You can have the best strategy, the best play and the best execution all go for naught because you can't shoot it.

Van Gundy is a good coach with great strategies and a great understanding of the game. His players really like him. But he needs to change his philosophy on this game.

Van Gundy primarly is responsible for the roster makeup of this club, not CD, not Les. When he wanted guys gone, they were gone. There hasn't been a player brought here without checking with him and making sure he wanted them. And now after complaining incessantly for over 2 years about not having his players here, he came out today in the paper and is saying he made a mistake and he should have kept Padgett here. He himself has to realize that the makeup of this roster is his fault. He cannot say these guys aren't his players. He took this job because he wanted to coach Yao. He wanted the trade for TMac because he felt it would fit better with what he wanted to do. And he has approved every transaction that has brought us player after player that could not shoot or was old and washed up. And he approved every transaction and determined every minute of play for every player on this team that caused players like Barry and Padgett who could shoot to be left out in the cold in favor of more defensive minded players who can't throw it into Lake Houston.

Coach should realize that he needs a roster full of shooters, offensive minded players, and he should earn his paycheck getting them to play defense. He should NOT be trying to get the most talented defensive players so he can play out of this world defense. They're still going to give up 80 plus a few. And in all likelihood they are going to be brickthrowers on the other end. We don't have the money to afford more great 2 way players, that is to say great shooters that can play the best defense. We should be picking the best defensive minded players from amongst a roster full of shooters, not trying to find a shooter amongst a roster full of defensive scrap and grunt players. Forget all the fancy schmancy defensive schemes, traps, double teams, zones, etc. Shooting is a requirement in this league. We are going nowhere until we are able to shoot the ball.

 

durvasa,

With all due respect, if he can't shoot the ball, he will wind up being a liability in winning time. I'm not saying we should draft Reddick. (I don't think we should.) But I am saying we should not draft any swingman that can't even shoot above 42% or so at the college level. We shouldn't draft a swingman that shoots below say 38% from 3 point land in college. At best they are another Bogans/Bowen. The 3 point line is shorter in college, the players are shorter and less athletic. If a perimeter player can't shoot 40% from college 3, what good is he going to do us? We shouldn't draft a PF or interior player that can't shoot above 50% in college. They aren't going to have any impact on our team either.

What I'm saying is there is plenty of talent around this league, players that can shoot. They may be weak, they may be skinny, they may not be known as a defensive stopper or even have the capability of being a stopper. But when they are open they can hit 50% of their shots, they can hit 40% from 3 point land, etc. We should have a roster full of those guys, not Ryan Bowen and Keith Bogans. Those 2 can't shoot to save their lives and they are a liability to us on the floor, I don't care how many knee burns they give us. Players like Kareem Rush for instance. He's been sitting out there for what a month now? Sign players like him, Richie Frahm, etc. Bring a whole pile of them to camp and pick the best of the bunch. I'm not a big fan of Rush, never have been. But he can shoot the ball. We're better off to carry him on the roster than to carry a brickthrower that makes us play 4 on 5 on the offensive end.

We have passed on guys and not picked up guys because they didn't have the "defensive" mentality and settled on players that can't shoot. There are plenty of shooters laying around the NBA, the NBDL, the CBA, foreign leagues, and the draft for us to be carrying all this "no shot" talent on our roster. Van Gundy gave away one of them. He needs to change his values and recognize the prime importance of shooting the basketball.

 

Only positive balance wins. You can be horrible on both ends of the floor you know and be balanced.

But it is much easier to play good offensively when you have good shooters and it is much easier to be positively balanced on both ends when you have good shooters that you coach to play good defense then it is to balanced by having good defenders that can't shoot a lick and try to get them to generate offense and teach them to shoot. Defense is all about desire. Offense is all about skill. You can't teach skill to a professional when they have 24 to 48 hours between games. You can't jump their skill level up to a different level in 2 months of training camp. It takes at least a whole summer of dedicated work to increase skill levels significantly. It does not take that kind of time to teach a group of guys to D it up. It's all about attitude and desire on the defensive end. That's why we have to find shooters who are willing to D it up, not defenders that are trying to figure out how to hit a shot.

You don't see much if you can't see the Spurs winning a championship this year. They are one of maybe 4 teams max that even have a chance to win it all. They will at least reach the Conference Finals and will be playing in the Final 4 of the NBA along with 3 other teams that can put the ball in the basket. And they've won what 3 of the last 6 or 7 championships??? That's a far cry from where we are at my friend. Send in the shooters.

 

Some of it has to do with being on the big stage. Supposedly Bowen shoots lights out in practice. Some of it has to do with learning the fundamental when you are young, learning them and practicing them right. It is obvious that Bowen has never really learned to shoot and never worked on it extensively. He probably always got by in H.S. by being tall. He got by in college by being taller and an above average hustling defender against college big men. He gets by in the NBA because he has found a coach with blinders on that can only see one side of the floor.