Jeff Capel Free Throw School

[BigSlam]

I know a lot of us often joke about it, but the proof is in the pudding - right?

Crash went from a 66.1% ft shooter to a 77.6% ft shooter
TC went from a 57.9% ft shooter to a 72.5% ft shooter
Boris went from a 68.6% ft shooter to a 76.3% ft shooter
JRich went from a 65.7% ft shooter to a 74.6% ft shooter

There has to be something to it. It can't just be coincidence.

[fatlever]

its definitely not a coincidence. there is something there. he seems to do wonders with turning bad ft shooters into decent ft shooters. i wish he could figure out a way to turn good ft shooters into great ft shooters, but maybe thats not in his bag of tricks.

[Rich4114]

how do you explain this one then:

DJ went from 89.3% ft shooter to a 76.8% ft shooter
Felton went from 80.5% ft shooter to 75.8% ft shooter

I think it's time to work on the guards. Those guys should both be shooting over 80% from the line.

[aznjustice14]

it's the jeff capel mid-70% free throw shooting school. should not be applied to anybody already above that mark apprently

[Stun704]

I wonder what progress Diop has made, air balling the crap out of his free throws last year

[BigSlam]

how do you explain this one then:

DJ went from 89.3% ft shooter to a 76.8% ft shooter
Felton went from 80.5% ft shooter to 75.8% ft shooter

I think it's time to work on the guards. Those guys should both be shooting over 80% from the line.

DJ's was a career 80% ft shooter at Texas - so last year was more likely the exception and probably not the rule.

Felts has been a carrer 78% ft shooter in the NBA so he is just about on his average.

I would imagine it would be considerably easier to lift your percentages from the 60's up to the 70's than it would be from the high 70's to the high 80's.

Just like golf. Getting your handicap from the 20's to the teens ins't too hard but getting it from the teens to single figures is a real bitch.

[BigSlam]

I wonder what progress Diop has made, air balling the crap out of his free throws last year

More interesting - wasn't Okafor enrolled for a couple of weeks while he was here but opted out in preference to do his own extended stretching?

[Fred Williamson]

now he needs to teach them how to shoot 3's

[Rich4114]

how do you explain this one then:

DJ went from 89.3% ft shooter to a 76.8% ft shooter
Felton went from 80.5% ft shooter to 75.8% ft shooter

I think it's time to work on the guards. Those guys should both be shooting over 80% from the line.

DJ's was a career 80% ft shooter at Texas - so last year was more likely the exception and probably not the rule.

Felts has been a carrer 78% ft shooter in the NBA so he is just about on his average.

I would imagine it would be considerably easier to lift your percentages from the 60's up to the 70's than it would be from the high 70's to the high 80's.

Just like golf. Getting your handicap from the 20's to the teens ins't too hard but getting it from the teens to single figures is a real bitch.

unacceptable, this makes too much sense

[fluffernutter]

This actually goes against conventional and statistical wisdom which says FT shooting has a strong correlation to actual in-game shooting (fg%).

If you can jerk your FT% up 8 or 15 percentage points via "a system," that's kinda a big deal. Because obviously your in-game FG% stays the same, and weakens the correlation.

Felton also is bad for this theory. FT% down, FG% up for the season. Bad Felton! Stat heads are gonna git you!

[Diop]

Bruce Bowen was the classic exception to that rule, I remember when his 3 point % was higher than his free throw %.
Free throws are a mental thing as well, if you can't make love to pressure, it can be difficult to hit those free throws,

[Paydro70]

Bruce Bowen was the classic exception to that rule, I remember when his 3 point % was higher than his free throw %.

One of the most underrated insane events in sports history. HOW??!?!?

[chrbal]

didn't believe you for a second, but there it is 02-03. The year he shoots his best FG% ever, he can only knock down about 40% of his free throws.

[doc.end]

I still belive that beast free throw shooting training would be done without ball and court. Just knowing how you should shoot it the right way and sitting and concentrating on that motion could do wonders. After time it should be quite automatic.

(there was a study once consisting of three comparable groups of (I don't remeber which one) musical instrument players, one learning the piece normal way, one without the instrument and one hlafway between. The one without the instrument had the best results. that impressed me so I remeber it and i think this could be used for any activity regarding just special kind of move like the free throw shooting; I think it is an approcach worth trying at least for injured players, espceially for those with an injured (shooting) hand, who couldn't do much of training anyway.)

[BigSlam]

Very, very interesting doc. Internalizing the theory before perfecting the practice. It obviously has merit based on the results you spoke about.

I watched a documentary once about a high school or college team that had an atrocious ft% as a team. They brought a specialist in and he noticed that a lot of the players weren't consistent with what they were doing with their ft process - and not just their form. The biggest thing was their eyes.

A lot of the guys would bounce the ball before shooting a ft and look down while they were doing it. By the time they stopped bouncing the ball and shot the ball they found out by looking at film that the players were only making eye contact with the hoop for a split second.

They did further studies and found that the human brain takes a couple of seconds to process distance so they weren't giving themselves the best opportunity to make the basket because they weren't giving their brain enough time to settle and process.

They also noticed that the players would sometimes look at the net, sometimes at the rim, sometimes at the square on the backboard. They deduced through their studies that looking at the net was the worst thing to look at because that is what your brain focuses on sending the message to your muscles computing the distance and invariably the shooter would leave the shot short. Same thing with focusing on the rim. The best results were by focusing on the square on the backboard.

Long story long, they mandated a team wide protocol for shooting ft's.

Step 1 - position yourself at the ft line holding the ball and count slowly to three
Step 2 - bounce the ball while looking at it counting slowly to three
Step 3 - get into your shooting position and hold it while staring at the square on the backboard while slowly counting to three
Step 4 - begin the shooting motion while still looking at the square on the backboard

Just adding this awareness significantly increased individual players ft% and therefore the teams ft%. Some of the guys went from 50% ft shooters to 80% ft shooters.

It was really interesting to see the results that dumbing it down and applying awareness and a process. So now every time I see a pro brick a ft after not taking their time at the line, I wonder.............what if?

[Diop]

i think free throws are at least 50% mental, so having a process to go through can really help take away the issues of overthinking or letting nerves get involved.

Its the same with set shot for goals in Aussie Rules football, which is why Matty Lloyd had that process of always pulling out a piece of grass and throwing it in the air to check for wind, even if he was playing in a closed stadium. He didn't even look at the glass but it seemed to settle him for the kick.