Inside the Huddle: Free Throw Shooting in Practice

FREE THROW SHOOTING

How much time in practice do you spend on free throws? When in practice do you work on free throws? Do you have favorite free throw drills? 

Bob Anderson- Lewistown

During practice I would yell,”Bonus shot.” One player would go to the foul line and the rest of the team would line up on the baseline. The foul shooter shoots one shot. If it’s missed, the team would run up and down the court twice. If he made it, he got a second shot. If he misses the second shot, the team runs up and down once. If he makes both, we go to the next drill. 

We also ended practice a lot with a drill we called “Six in a Row.” Each player has a ball and hopefully you have 6 baskets. If you free throw, you get your ball, dribble with weak hand to the next basket, and make a weak hand layup. You get your ball and shoot another free throw. If you can make all lay-ups and free throws at all 6 baskets, you are done. If you miss any of the shots, you must get your ball and start over. If a player misses 2 or 3 shots, this becomes a mental toughness drill. We used this to end practice a lot. Sometimes we put a time on it so it wouldn’t drag out too far. 

Todd Borrison- Mediapolis

Dave Feeney- Normal Community

I am countercultural on this topic.  I don't believe there is a correlation between shooting free throws in practice and how well we shoot free throws in games.  Within scrimmage situations, we will call fouls and have kids shoot free throws...we will sometimes have kids shoot one, two or three free throws in front of everyone between drills or practice segments to replicate pressure.   

Evan Massey- Galesburg 

At some point in my career I began to realize that whether our teams shot well or poorly from the free throw line it was determined by whether our best free throw shooters were shooting our most free throws. So my number one suggestion is to figure out how to get your good ft shooters to draw fouls and your bad ft shooters to not get fouled. 

I tried to figure when was the best time to shoot free throws in practice. At a certain point I began to feel that free shooting in practice was the best way to kill a great practice. We could have great energy and being playing hard- then stop to shoot 20 free throws and our practice was usually dead. My belief is that you shoot free throws at the end of practice not to mess up the rest of your practice. 

When a player came to me and said, “What’s wrong with my free throw,” I wanted to say that it was their failure to shoot enough free throws in the off-season. I firmly believe that free throw shooters are made in off-season by shooting lots of free throws in a row to build confidence. 

When I started coaching, the adage was, “You will never shoot more than two free throws in a row in a game, so don’t shoot more than two free throws in a row in practice.” I totally disagree with this. My belief is that the most important reason to shoot free throws is to build confidence. When you are always doing only 2 free throws or doing drills that are “pressure free throws,” you are teaching players that free throws are stressful. There is a place for those things but I think your best bet is to do things to build confidence not tension. I like doing things like…

** Shoot til you make then shoot til you miss- see how many in arow you can make.