As sophomores in our high school careers, my brother (Eugene) and I (Michael) were avid basketball players for our high school varsity team. However, there was one glaring weakness that kept us from reaching our true potential in the sport of basketball. And it happens to be the whole basis of the sport: shooting.
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Just like any other kid would, we scrambled to find free and easy resources that we could get our hands on from the internet and other places before our junior year. It was clear we needed to gather the “best” shooting resources we could get a hold of.
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We bought almost every shooting video, gimmick, aid with our own limited amount of cash that we earned and saved. That was how obssessed we were in attempting to improve at shooting. As much as we spent our cash, energy and focus on shooting, I’ll admit: we was still terrible shooters. In fact, I probably got worse! I started seeing my shots airballing more and more! Every time I would put up a shot, I hesitated and was nervous. I was so frustrated and upset because I believed I put in so much effort, that I was doomed to see success at one point.
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After successfully going through and making the tryouts for the upcoming varsity basketball team, I hoped that my shooting would soon take a turn for the better. I continued to push myself and work harder in the gym. Me and my brother would put in almost 3-4 hours a day in the gym, just to improve our game. But, more importantly, our shooting. Sadly, we did not see any significant results, again.
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During my junior season, I struggled big time. Not only did my shooting struggle, my confidence did, as well. I couldn’t hit any free throws, and got extremely nervous as it was my turn to take my two free throws from the line in games. My ballhandling, passing, defences all took a toll as I continued to focus on my shooting. It was a complete obsession. I believed that if I worked just a bit more harder, I could get through this.
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Well, I can tell you that my junior year was a complete disaster. I was so disappointed at myself at the end of the season, and felt hopeless and disgraced. I ended up on the bench almost the entire time, as my coach had lost faith in me (I assume) and what I could bring onto the court. I kept asking myself, “What could I have done more?”
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{High School Varsity Photos}
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Before the next senior season, we came across a guy named Tom Nordland (owner of Swish). Apparently, he was an awesome shooter back in high school, lost his shot in college, and relearned his superior shot that he had in high school. He continues to teach his unique shooting style that he believes is the essense of pure shooting. I can tell you he was a great person to add to our cluttered toolbox. I’ve also ran into great shooting mentors locally and globally who have given concepts that were far from conventional. I guess you can say I was becoming a sponge soaking up all this valubale information and adding it to my game.
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This came the AHA moment! After struggling with my current shooting stroke, I have learned tremendously from my mistakes. And I can finally tell you this type of learning is an absolute must to truly understand how to control the flight of the ball and manipulate your body in ways to create a predictable plus consistent shooting stroke. I’ve literally tried every type of shooting mechanic and concept known to existance and I can tell you what mechanics work and what mechanics don’t work.
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We’ve learned that nearly all conventional wisdom regarding basketball shooting in the game of basketball today is very flawed (ie: remember the 2004 USA Olympic National Basketball team in the Olympics? They had amazing athletes, but no player could effectively spread the court). Has the fundamentals of the game been compromised due to poor shooting?. Unfortunately, many coaches think they know how to teach shooting, yet the majority of them can’t put the ball in the hoop themselves. What happened to the saying: “You can’t give what you don’t have”. It surely applies here, don’t you think? All this manifests as coaches regurgitating the same old shooting techniques while their players suffer with poor results and develop a faulty way of playing the game…and all we do is tell them, “Put the time in” or “More repetition (should)=More Success”. Well, doing the same thing will get you the same result. What about changing the way we look at shooting and coaching the coaches properly.
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End of rant. Well, as we applied our newly learned and discovered shooting techniques, our shooting slowly became more predictable. Our shooting arch noticeably became higher, as we have learned to not use the wrist and hand to mostly power our shots, but with our leg drive. Everytime we hit the gym to practice shooting, we continued to progress and learn bits and pieces of this great way of shooting. As well, other players were starting to take notice, which really enhanced my self-esteem not only on the court, but off it as well. It soon looked like we were going to get better. Finally.
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During our senior years, I broke out. Literally. My perimeter shooting set me apart from the rest of my teammates and around the city. I am able to knock down free throws, mid range, and 3 point shots consistently and with ease. With limited playing minutes, I was able to get my 9-12 points a game without having to work as hard. Later, my playing time increased and many of my teammates were wondering how I improved dramatically from my junior to senior year (Which I am sharing with you right now). I didn’t gain any height or size, nor did I even play many games or work on drills on a consistant basis during that summer. It really came down to my improved shooting that instantly was making my team better.
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Now done my freshman year in college, I’ve grown even more in my shooting. I’ve even dug deeper and learned more efficient ways of controlling ball flight in my shooting, myself. I can stand out and be that guy, during pickup games (and later, senior men league games) and totally take control of the game, just with my perimeter shooting. If you look at our YouTube videos of me and my brother displaying our shooting, we are definitely NOT the strongest dudes or tallest. Our approach is so much more simpler, easier and effective than all of the other shooting instuctors that I’ve followed (ie: Rick Torbett, Coach Wissel, etc). More importantly, we can shoot lights out ourselves! Like we preach, only follow teachers who can do what they teach!
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Our way of shooting isn’t accepted with the mainstream type of shooting. In fact, we often go against it! Some examples of things we continue to blame for the poor shooting that is regularly being taught to young players include squaring up, reaching your fingers in a “cookie” jar fashion (that one doesn’t make sense to me!), shooting at the top of your jump, etc. These are things that almost all shooting coaches preach. They say they follow this, yet they can’t even shoot well themselves! On the contrary, my brother (Eugene) and I (Michael) are great shooters ourselves who are willing to display the results of our program for others to see. We have nothing to hide for anyone.
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As we captured our remarkable transformed shooting on tape, we continue to post them up on YouTube for you guys to learn. As well, this website has a ton of great information in the blog posts section where we continue to update you guys on how we are shooting, what we are learning and how you can learn how to shoot this way or better. We’ve also written articles for article databases EzineArticles and InfoBarrel . We try to be as transparent as possible, and don’t hold anything back!
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Best of luck,
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From left: Eugene and Michael Tran (tell the difference?)
