Posted 01 October 2020,

I have been working with Mark Clay, a personal basketball coach I found through CoachUp – a site for connecting coaches and clients. We have been working on ball handling and shooting fundamentals, and it seems to be improving my game considerably (to the extent that a 71-year old B-Ball Wannabe’s game can be improved). Here are some videos from my September 28, 2020 session (that’s Mark in the background of the first video). Mark has been super helpful and supportive, even though I’m absolutely certain that I’m not his (or anyone’s) idea of a hot NBA prospect ;-).

23 March 2021 Update:

I had to suspend training with Mark last Fall, as I underwent right shoulder surgery to address a long-running pain issue. After a successful surgery and rehab, I re-connected with Mark to use up the last three sessions of the original 10-session package. Last night was the final session, and the following video shows the results. I have to say that I never thought I would be draining threes off the dribble, but that’s exactly what happened last night (well, there were a lot of misses, too, but….

And here’s a link to a much longer, hi-res record of the above session

Posted 06 April 2018

It’s been almost six months since I last posted on this subject, and I have been practicing my outside shot for an hour or so almost every weekday.   I can’t say that I’ve made spectacular progress, but I have discovered a number of techniques that don’t work (the Edison approach, I believe).   Interestingly, as the following video shows, after all that time I seem to have returned to a style very similar to the one I demonstrated in my last post on this subject back in September 2017.

May 2018 Update:

Here is a short clip taken on my home court, showing a couple of nice shots in slo-mo, taken with my new (to me) iphone SE.

Posted 14 September 2017

It has been almost exactly one year since I last posted about my ongoing Quixotic quest to develop an outside basketball shot.  In the intervening period I have had to deal with chronic pain in both knees.

Fortunately I have gotten significant relief from cortisone shots, but unfortunately the relief is fairly short-lived; I get about 2-3 months of relatively pain-free activity, and then another month or so of increasing pain until I am forced to go back for more drugs.  The orthopod tells me that I can continue to do 3-4 shots/year, but eventually I’ll be in the market for new knees.

As it turns out, I have an appointment in about a week to see a joint replacement specialist, and I suspect the result of this visit will be a knee replacement surgery appointment :-(.

In the meantime, I have been making some actual visible progress on developing an outside shot, and just today I hit two 3’s in a 3-on-3 game, one of which was the game winning shot – wowee!!

Here’s a short video showing front and side views of the current shot technique

 

23 Sept 2017 Update:

Here are a couple more short videos taken on my home b-ball court.  My technique is (slowly!) improving, to the point where I hit 22 of 27 foul shots and most of the medium range ones.  These videos focus on my release and follow-through, from the side (first video) and then the front/back (second video)