Blog Shot Charts
January 28th, 2008“In addition to a rigorous offseason training program, Wizards forward Caron Butler attributed his career-high 21.5 points and .481 shooting percentage to the work of shooting coach Dave Hopla, who joined Washington’s coaching staff this season. One of the elements of Hopla’s expertise is shot charting, which is new to Butler and his teammates. It allows a player to see the spots on the floor from which he’s shooting well — or poorly. ‘It lets me know what I need to work on,’ Butler said. ‘And with the percentage now, I know from the floor, I’m shooting like 80 [percent] from 16 on in. It gives me confidence. I can come to a spot on the floor and know it’s a good shot. I can be like ‘Coach, I’m shooting 80! It was a good shot!’”
Don’t all teams do this? During my first year as a high school assistant coach, we used shot charts during and after games. I assumed everyone did it, so I have used them ever since. Now, admittedly, I do not use them as extensively as this with individual players, but when I applied with a couple teams this summer for a job as a player development coach, I assumed this is one of the tools a player development coach would use.
As I interview coaches from different areas for my Hard 2 Guard Player Development Newsletters, few have good systems for measuring players’ improvement. This is a question my friend Rick Allison urged me to ask. When I did a lot of individual training with experienced players, I tracked every shot during our workouts and kept a notebook of all the players’ workbooks. I knew the number of shots they took in an hour, where they shot from and how many they made. Without these numbers, how do you judge improvement? Now, I mostly work with beginners, and I work with players sporadically, so I am not as detailed in my notekeeping, as I measure their performance through the improved form on their shot, correcting a weakness, rather than through makes and misses, as they are early in the learning process.
But, with varsity, college or pro players, how do you know if a player is improving if you do not track their shots? Are they shooting a higher percentage because they shoot better shots? Are they only shooting open shots? Have they extended their range of consistency? Why are they improving or not improving?