I’ve referred to this a couple of times in the newsletter, but I’ll say it again.
Shooting is mostly just simple physics mixed with a little bit of art.
The art component comes from the fact that we are just human. We can create the most complex shooting form, but with a little bit of touch and muscle memory we still have a chance to make the shot. Heck, we might not even need the touch and muscle memory. Dumb luck is enough to make ONE shot.
But the more things we can gain in our favour, the more advantages we can create, the more simplicity and repeatability we can fine, the more likely we are to make shot consistently. This is where the simple physics comes in.
We work on our balance to simplify our base. We try to get the middle of the hand under the centre of the ball so that we can lift the ball in a straight line. We put our non-shooting hand on the side of the ball to hold the ball in our shooting hand, but we make sure not to push with it so we don’t push the ball off line. We build all kinds of little habits in an effort to simplify the physics of shooting the ball, or make them more repeatable.
The spin we put on the ball is no different.
Part of the reason players snap their wrist is to create backspin on the ball. There is a very simple reason we want backspin. It increases the odds that missed shots will still go in. How? Simple physics.
Every shot that players shoot are moving forward. If they shoot from 3 feet away, the ball is moving 3 feet forward. If they shoot from 25 feet away, the ball is moving 25 feet forward. And if the ball is moving forward, but hits a flat surface (let’s pretend the rim is flat for a second) without spin, then it will continue moving forward. This means it will leave the area of the rim and not have much of a chance to go in on the second bounce. But if we can get the ball spinning backwards while moving forward, then when it hits at flat surface (still pretending the rim is flat) then the backspin of the ball will cancel out the forward momentum of the ball and keep the ball roughly in the area of the rim, giving it a second chance to go in.
Now, admittedly, the rim isn’t flat, so this isn’t going to work every time. But that isn’t the point. We have a constant (the ball moving forward), and we want to have another constant (ball spinning backwards) that will cancel it out if we do happen to hit the rim.
So that is how we get as many “shooters bounces” as possible. By snapping our wrist to create backspin on the ball.
There are other reasons (in my opinion, even more important reasons) for snapping the wrist, namely creating a funnelling motion with the hand on the ball, but that is for another email.
