Basketball shooting drills are a great way to improve your scoring and increase the accuracy and the reliability of your shots. It doesn’t matter how good your movement or tactical play is – if you can’t shoot when your team is relying on you then you might as well not even play. In this article, I will show you a few drills that will help you to become a pinpoint shooter.
Free Throw Drills
It is boring to simply do a free throw and then collect the ball, or even to have someone to retrieve the ball and throw it back to you. Also, this regular drill is not very realistic at all because there are no distractions and no pressure and it does nothing to improve your general shooting.
It is far better to do team drills. For example, have one shooter reader to throw and line up the rest of the team around the key as normal. Let them take two shots as they would do for a regular foul. If they miss one shot, the entire team (including the shooter) has to run a lap of the court. This is real pressure!
Tip Drill
This is a great drill for warming up those muscles before a game. It is also good for getting familiar with the backboard. The aim with this drill is not to score a basket but to use the backboard to pass the ball from one side to another. Here’s how it works:
One player approaches the hoop as if they were going to a regular lay-up except that they pass from one side to the other using the backboard. Here, another player is waiting (an entire line behind him) and he must jump up for the rebound and then pass to the other side in a similar fashion before his feet touch the ground. The rule here is that your feet must not touch the ground while you are holding the ball.
There, another line of players is waiting and each will also successively jump up for the rebound and pass it over.
This shooting drill is quite fast and you cannot hesitate or lose focus or else you will not get your chance to grab the ball yourself.
Swish Or Lose
Here’s another good one. This is a solo drill. Start yourself off with 5 points and start doing free throws.
Each time you score a “swish”, you gain a point. Each time you score by hitting the backboard or the rim, you don’t score any points. Each time you miss, you lose a point.
To finish the drill, you must get to 10 points. This drill works really well because the idea is to become extremely laser targeted in your shooting and aim for the swish every time. This way, even if your shooting is a few millimetres off, you will still get a basket in real life.