PACK POINTS
Nothing but net
To get a swish rather than a brick, you need the best possible conditions for releasing the basketball from your hand.
Pay attention, Shaq: Two NC State engineers have figured out the best way to shoot a free throw — a frequently underappreciated skill that gets more important as the game clock winds down.
To get a swish rather than a brick, you need the best possible conditions for releasing the basketball from your hand, say Drs. Chau Tran and Larry Silverberg, mechanical and aerospace engineers and co-authors of a peer-reviewed study.
The engineers used hundreds of thousands of three-dimensional computer simulations of basketball free-throw trajectories to arrive at their conclusions. After running the simulations, Tran and Silverberg formed recommendations to improve free-throw shooting.
First, the engineers say that shooters should launch the shot with about three hertz of back spin. That translates to the ball making three complete backspinning revolutions before reaching the hoop. Back spin deadens the ball when it bounces off the rim or backboard, the engineers assert, giving the ball a better chance of settling through the net.
Shooters should aim for the back of the rim, leaving close to 5 centimeters — about 2 inches — between the ball and the back of the rim, the engineers say. According to the simulations, aiming for the center of the basket decreases the probabilities of a successful shot by almost 3 percent.
Other recommendations concern the height and launch angle of the release.
“Our recommendations might make even the worst free-throw shooters — you
know who you are, Shaquille O’Neal and Ben Wallace — break
60 percent from the free-throw line,” Silverberg says with tongue firmly
in cheek. “A little bit of physics and a lot of practice can make everyone
a better shooter from the free-throw line.” 