Form

digging my new bball gang...
yknow how when you start out playing with a bball gang and suck at that time, no matter how much you improve, when you play with them again you always regress abit to the initial stage?

it works the other way too
if you play with a new bball gang and that first time you play with them you're super on form and drain every shot, from then on thats your level already; whenever you play with that gang your confidence is sky high and you start performing at that imba level

hopefully i just did it. and i like my new style too, even though it was kinda forced.
because of a serious injury (long story short, playing bball with some north carolina dude, drove past him already, but he tried to chase me from behind, den he landed on my leg and my knee turned. not forwards and backwards, mind. left to right. so that was 6 months out of commission), i decided to change my playing style. I couldnt afford another 6 month layoff from bball, it would kill me!

i looked at the most durable player ever. ray allen. deadly shooter, doesn't take risks when driving. even if he drives, if there is a chance along the way he will pull up and shoot immediately instead of going for the layup.
why?
i know now
in singapore, my height is pretty beastly. by right i should go for the layup every single time. but there's always a guy defending the rim. maybe 2 out of 10 times there will be a clash of bodies with him. maybe 1 out of 20 times, those clashes result in an injury. usually its me on the worse end of it.

I decided to stop that from happening again. The only way to be able to do what ray allen does is to have a good shooting form. Usually i dominate when I'm playing at neighbourhood courts, as long as they aren't school team level else its really hard to score much. I've heard every compliment, from unstoppable to holyshit. Every compliment except one.

"His shooting form is damn nice"

While I was out for 6 months, I couldn't play bball matches cos it was risky (could worsen my injury) so I had to force myself to go onto the court at wierd hours so I could practice shooting on my own. I never had good shooting form; I didn't need it. The ball went in reasonably enough, and I was usually taller than the guy guarding me so I didn't need a high arc on my shot like shorter players do. But it didn't really look nice. During my training, I really worked on my form.

I spent hours practicing a new shot I had discovered. They call it the hop step shot. Everyone starts out with the 1-2 step shot. Your dad did it, his dad before him. Its ancient and slow as fk. I could never get a proper shot in the past with the 1-2step, with a defender closing down on me from say maybe 0.5 metres away. By the time I got the ball up above my head, he was already right on my face 0.1 metres away. The hop step shot was totally different. It was insanely fast, and the momentum somehow stabilized my form. (I discussed this with my bball bro junda immediately after the game. we believe that this is the true secret of the quick release. talking about ray allen's quick release, not steph's, which isn't really a secret, he releases the ball on the way up rather than at the peak. we always thought that the quick release shot came from the hand, but when we rushed the hand, the shot went to shit. so we gave it up after awhile. now i know. it isn't the hand at all, its the footwork. its the hop step.) The more I practiced it, the more addicted I got. Finally, my shot felt steady, it felt good.

And i tasted the fruits of my labour at last. The first time in my life, I heard someone say my shooting form is nice. I've never heard that before. It was the first time I've played a real game after I seriously worked on my form. Not to be dramatic or anything, but truthfully, it gave me a warm feeling from head to toes immediately. I went on a mad shooting spree after hearing that. Every single jump shot (all outside the paint, mind) went in, as long as I didnt have a hand right in my face.

It was insane.

It was beautiful.

It was the best feeling ever. The more the shots went in, the better my confidence got, and the better my shooting became.

Didn't last too long though, after draining 10-20 shots, i started being defended extremely tightly. And as I've never actually been such a deadeye to warrant that defense, I couldn't really handle it. In the past, people couldn't guard me as tight as I had a preference to drive, in fact they usually wanted me to shoot cos my shot was less than 50% accuracy. So that was my first experience being guarded so tight that I couldn't shoot at all. The right move in that case was to drive, but I wasnt going to risk that, after developing a new style that is so safe.

Doesn't matter. I know how to adapt. I'll have new tricks to handle the new defence sooner than later.

In the meantime, the future's bright. My bball success will have a bearing on my career success. Playing bball improves my mood, improves my fitness and body, which improved my ability. And my new playing style just improved the longevity of my game a hundredfold.

Makes me happy too ;)