How to Use a Shot Chart

Henry Abbott linked to a good article which describes the way that Shane Battier uses a shot chart and charting program in his defense against Kobe Bryant:

The data essentially broke down the floor into many discrete zones and calculated the odds of Bryant making shots from different places on the court…how well he scored off screens, off pick-and-rolls, off catch-and-shoots and so on.

180Shooter.com’s Shot Tracker program provides the same type of information to coaches so they can learn about and assist their players. How is that valuable?

The numbers show him that Allen Iverson is one of the most efficient scorers in the N.B.A. when he goes to his right; when he goes to his left he kills his team. The Golden State Warriors forward Stephen Jackson is an even stranger case. “Steve Jackson,” Battier says, “is statistically better going to his right, but he loves to go to his left – and goes to his left almost twice as often.”

If you coached Iverson, wouldn’t you use this information? Wouldn’t you structure your offense to get Iverson or Jackson going to his right, rather than to his left?

Then, during the off-season, wouldn’t you work on his finishing and productivity off a left-hand dribble?

As for Kobe:

When he shoots directly after receiving a pass, he is more efficient than when he shoots after dribbling.

As his coach, isn’t that important to know? Wouldn’t you work harder to run him off screens for catch-and-shoot shots rather than depending on him to create his own shot off the dribble?

This type of information could greatly increase the effectiveness of a team’s offense (if you played to each player’s strengths), and the effectiveness of a coach’s off-season training program (by attacking some of the weaknesses).

I designed 180Shooter so youth and high school coaches would have easy access to this information so they could help their players improve and run more efficient offenses that used their players’ strengths.

Shooting and Scoring

According to this article, scoring in high school basketball is on a steady decline in Pennsylvania. Considering that my alma mater averaged close to 80ppg before there was a shot clock when I was a high school sophomore, and now if a team scores 80 points in one game it is kind of a big deal, I agree.

“Back in the day, we may not of had the most talented or athletic kids, but everybody could put the ball on the deck and score,” Hendershot said. “You don’t see that now. Is that a result of the defense? I’m not sure. It’s tough to relate.

Inevitably the issue returns to fundamentals and shooting.

The one thing most coaches brought up was a lack of shooting fundamentals. It goes hand-in-hand with another point made — players spend less and less time in the off-season getting better.

As Forbes Road girls coach Craig Cutchall said. “It may sound simple, but you can’t shoot unless you shoot. Any coach can teach a player how to shoot, but a lot of kids today don’t put the shooting time in themselves to get better.”

I am unfamiliar with Pennsylvania. However, in California, most kids participate in basketball year-round or almost year-round once they start high school, if not before high school. Players play for high school teams, high school AAU teams, club teams and work out with private trainers. To me, time is not the problem.

Could that time be used more efficiently? I certainly believe so. When do coaches expect their players to work on their shooting individually when they are constantly running from one practice to the next? When do they have time for the “30 days” as I wrote about in my newsletter when AAU and club basketball starts before the high school state championship game?

With a year-round competitive season, when do players have the off-season time to work on their skills individually? When I was in high school, we had no organized activities in the fall or spring. We played pick-up games without a coach (it was against the rules back then) and then lifted weights. Some days we went to the park for pick-up games there. Nobody had heard of a personal shooting coach – if you wanted to improve your shooting, you practiced your shooting.

In today’s game, however, kids get more and more coaching, and play with more and more structure, yet coaches complain that the kids are getting worse and worse at the fundamentals. It is easy to blame x-boxes, but is that really the reason? Or, has the system and the coaching negatively impacted players’ fundamental development by placing too much of a priority on team practices and competition to the exclusion of individual improvement and free play?

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The Importance of Goals

I found this article about the St. John Bosco football team and their sports psychologist, Dr. Ken Ravizza. I have never met Dr. Ravizzari or taken one of his classes, but I know of him through the Positive Coaching Alliance, as one of the tools that PCA presents (I’m a PCA presenter) in the “Re-defining Winner” section comes from Dr. Ravizzari.

So what’s the first thing Ravizza asks athletes? Why do they do what they do?

If an athlete doesn’t know his goal, he won’t succeed, Ravizza said. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 12-year-old figure skater, a high school quarterback or a pitcher in the major leagues – like the Rays’ Matt Garza, whom Ravizza worked with this season.

“Every athlete will tell you they like doing their sport, but the key is finding out why,” Ravizza said. “You want to get the players to know why they’re enjoying themselves.”

As an individual trainer, I stopped working with players who could not tell me why they wanted to work out. I have new clients write down their goals and I review them. I want to know why they are training so I can help them reach their goal. Without a goal, you’re just exercising.

My 180 Shooter program was another effort to help players set goals and measure their improvement. I can’t believe when players tell me they don’t know their shooting percentage or they don’t know how many shots they took or made in their workout. If you don’t know what you’re doing at practice, how do you know if you’re getting better? What are you accomplishing with your workout if you don’t track makes and misses? Without a goal, what are you really doing?

Maya Moore, Practice and Success

The Sports Illustrated college basketball preview featured an article describing Maya Moore’s work ethic and competitiveness. While a great talent with skills, length and size, her teammates coaches and TV analysts credited her competitiveness and work ethic.

“Maya wants to be the best at everything, and I mean everything,” says junior center Tina Charles.

We spend so much time glorifying shooting ability or defensive quickness, yet, inevitably, the best players are always the most competitive and the hardest workers. Depaul University Head Coach Doug Bruno compares Moore’s competitiveness to Michael Jordan’s, but it’s her effort which draws more attention.

“We talk about shooters being in the zone, but her work ethic is in the zone,” says TV analyst Debbie Antonelli. “I’ve never said that about another player except Tamika Catchings. [About] how many players can you say: They never take a play off?”

UConn assistant coach Shea Ralph assigned each guard a certain number of shot to take in the preseason.

“At the end of the first week she received a text from Moore breaking down her shots taken and percentages made from seven feet, 15-feet and three-point line and off the dribble. ‘It said, my goal, without defense, is this percentage,’ says Ralph. ‘I only asked her to take shots. But that’s the kind of kid she is; she wants to see improvement.’”

I don’t see anything noteworthy here. To me, this is what every player who wants to be great should do. I don’t understand just shooting a certain number of shots. Just shooting does not make you better. And, shooting without tracking results is meaningless – practicing without a goal is just exercising. I designed the 180 Shooter program for players like Moore who want to be great, who keep track of their shots and who want to measure their improvement over time to meet their self-imposed goals.

Unfortunately, as people have emailed since I developed the 180 Shooter program, few players track their practice shots, set goals or measure their improvement. Instead, players want to be great without all the effort involved in getting there. They need a personal shooting coach to motivate them to practice.

The great players are competitive – they want to know their results, they have to know where they stand. And, they work hard. They crave success and enjoy the process of reaching their goals. Consequently, with their competitiveness and work ethic, they improve, develop their skills and become great players who make the game look easy, so those on the outside attribute their success to their natural-born skills and talents. But, that’s almost never the case: successful people outwork the competition to become successful. As Magic Johnson said, “Almost without exception, the best players are the hardest workers.”

Practice Smarter, Not Harder

From an October Men’s Health article titled “Inside the NFL’s Muscle Factory” about Oakland Raiders’ rookie Darren McFadden:

Superior athletic ability in not enough anymore, Michael Johnson said. “You can have great talent and a great work ethic, but if you’re not working smart, you’re not getting better. We show our athletes how to work smart.”

This morning, I read about a high school that (supposedly) practices three times a day on three days a week with additional practices on other days. I just wonder what they could possibly do, as my teams in professional leagues never practiced near that much.

In the United States, we tend to focus on quantity, not quality. During the winter, I interviewed Sandra Jansson, a former University of Miami and Barry University player who I coached against when she was a teenager in Sweden for an article for Women’s Basketball. One comment that she made was the difference between quantity and quality. Her coach in Sweden with Telge Energi, Benny Johanssen, focused on quality. Her college coaches seemed to care only about quantity.

Quantity does not make you better; quality makes you better. I created the 180 Shooter program to help coaches and players train smarter, not harder by providing information in an easy to use format. I know a lot of players who want to be good, but they often do not kow what to do or how to do it. The 180 Shooter program was an effort to bridge that gap and give players a tool to assist with their own workouts, so they work smarter, not harder and visually see how hard and how successfully they work. It makes a workout meaningful because it tracks the quality, not just the quantity.

I believe work ethic is a talent. I encourage coaches to select and recruit work ethic. However, for the work ethic to lead to success, it must be directed correctly and managed correctly. Shooting thousands of shots with poor form or no intensity is not going to make you a better shooter, just as overtraining, eating poorly and undersleeping is going to lead to fatigue and performance decreases. However, when a player with Darren McFadden’s talent and work ethic learns to train smart, watch out!