Nick Nurse’s Basic Rules for Teaching Shooting
In Nick Nurse’s book, Rapture, he covers his basic rules for teaching shooting, something he notes he still uses to this day with NBA players:
Line up your shooting foot - the right foot for right-handlers-directly with the center of the rim. Make sure to keep your feet spread far enough apart that you have proper balance.
Keep the fingers and thumb on your shooting hand relaxed. You cannot shoot well if you’re squeezing the ball.
Your index finger and middle finger should go around the center stripe of the ball, or around the air hole. This is super important because that’s the middle of the ball.
Your other hand guides the ball as you raise to shoot- but it is uninvolved as you let the ball go. Releasing the shot is a one-handed process and has been since the two-handed set shot went out of fashion about seventy years ago.
Bring the ball straight up with your wrist cocked and release with your elbow locked and arm extended straight at the target.
The ball should roll off the middle and index fingers giving it perfect symmetrical spin. I call this the “flight” spin and not the more commonly used “backspin” because doing it correctly not only makes the ball land more softly if it hits the rim, but also makes it fly straight. If you release a shot with side spin, it may subtly curve like a baseball pitcher’s breaking ball.
Nick Nurse works with his patented shot correcting basketball, known as the “Pill.”