Why is basketball so hard

Why basketball is hard New, 22 comments. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Gregory Shamus. The two most straightforward ways to get the ball to the rim would seem to be: Beat the defense down the court in transition. Pass the ball directly to a player near the rim in the post. Transition offense numbers from mid-December : Keep in mind those numbers were posted exclusively against generally weaker nonconference opponents.

For low post offense, the numbers are even less stratospheric these are only a week old : Even a team like Indiana, with an elite offensive center, comes up short of a point per possession when they throw the ball into the post.

Well, here, courtesy of Synergy, is a peak at MSU's efficiency numbers under different offensive situations extracted prior to the PSU and OSU games : It turns out that the most effective offensive plays are the ones that are the hardest to plan: offensive rebounding you're not trying to miss the shot, after all and cutting which usually happens in reaction to another offensive move and the subsequent defensive adjustment.

A few miscellaneous notes: It appears MSU's transition offense has gotten more efficient of late. This is a good thing. I assume "Miscellaneous" covers possessions where the offense turns the ball over before it can get into a specific offensive play.

We should do less of that. MSU almost never passes the ball to the guy rolling off the pick in the pick and roll. And whey they do, it doesn't usually go very well. A lot of that may just be the cost of having someone of Derrick Nix ' girth setting most of the picks. Overall, the pick and roll is a very inefficient source of offense for MSU--although that's at least partly because it's the team's go-to strategy when the shot clock is running down.

To close, a couple big picture thoughts on the Synergy data: As fascinating as it is I've only scratched the surface of what the data covers here , it's probably a good thing I don't have regular access to this stuff. I think it would end up crowding out other things in my life--like, say, "holding down a job" or "being able to maintain a family. Tempo-free analysis paints a more accurate picture than conventional stats do in terms of big picture trends, but that's mostly stuff that coaches but not fans or most commentators are going to figure out through their own in-depth film study and analysis.

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I shot shots before going to play pickup basketball all day at the YMCA and then I would come home and shoot another shots, usually those shots in the evening were shots I missed in the pickup games. I rinsed and repeated that process every day, all summer. I had my own competition come up to me and ask me what I did, I just shrugged and said practice. I hit a few game-winners that year put up career-high numbers and even scoring 44 points in a single game going 19 for 23 from the field.

Shooting a basketball and making a basket on a consistent basis may be the hardest skill in the game. You are never shooting the ball from the same spot on the court all while having to adjust to the many variables the game throws at you, from the defense to the shot clock, to even how you receive a pass when you are ready to shoot.

You rarely shoot the same shot in a game, think about it how often are shooting the same shot twice. Players like Steph Curry and Klay Thompson have perfect form, the form that works for them in which they perfected over and over again with all the shot mechanics completely in sync. Rarely is their shooting form ever off, even when Steph Curry is shooting from halfcourt it looks the same as when he shoots it from the three-point line.

They do not stop practicing form, that may be a secret in itself to becoming an elite shooter. Are you practicing perfect form? You practice you play and you practice some more and you feel like you are not getting any better at basketball. This leads to frustration, low confidence, and you are just not having fun playing anymore. Growing up I played a lot of sports and excelled at many always being one of the best on the teams I played on.

But basketball was very different and I played a lot of it. The game as we know is very technical and difficult to bring all the necessary skills together to perform a skill such as putting the basketball into the hoop. It took me a lot of shots to become a good shooter and a heck of a lot more to be a great shooter, I knew I had to be obsessed with getting better if I wanted to improve. We are talking about hours and years of practice here.

Hard work and consistency is key. Going through scoring slumps and wanting to quit because nothing feels like its going right, happens regularly, you get passed it and you become mentally tougher each time.

Have I been doing all that I can to get better? If you are just going through the motions and not trying to perfect shooting form and fundamental skills along with actually putting in quality practice time in skill development, well you may need to rethink how you are using your time.