Basketball Mechanics Guide

This Guide is meant to be authoritative and accurate, but not exhaustive. Basketball is a complex sport, and basic skills need to be developed through practice and repetition. We will cover these topics and more: Free Throw Shooting, Vertical Leap, Passing, Ball Handling, and other dimensions of the game, include some psychology and strategy. I hope this Guide will prove useful and fun for those who read it. More Guides will be added over time.

Free Throw Shooting

Free Throw Shooting

Shooting

Shooting

Vertical Leap

Make sure that if you’re going to perform plyometric exercises, you can squat about 1.5 x your own weight as a general strength precaution. If you don’t have strong legs, you risk injury. Ultimately, vertical leap is about engaging fast-twitch muscle recruitment in the posterior chain (abdominals, calves, hamstrings, glutes [butt], lower back). Speed + strength = muscular power, and you want to develop muscular power to improve vertical leap. You will also want to have increased plantarflexion and dorsiflexion--the ability to flex and extend the foot with force and greater range of motion.

Vertical Leap
Vertical Leap by talaat
Vertical Leap [Alternative Thread/Guide by ChaNgeD]

Thanks to frostbrn for suggesting the following videos:

This is is a useful discussion of moving without the ball:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzLA78Qb3fg&feature=related - Moving without the ball Rip Hamilton

This is a great discussion of rebounding, although it assumes an intermediate level of knowledge in some parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_ozw1PTgC8&feature=related - Rebounding Dwight Howard

This a basic introduction to taking a charge, but it's not packed with information:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv4l0KInMNM&feature=related - Take a charge Shane Battier

Here are some videos that are useful to intermediate players:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_DTrabY-o0&feature=related - Passing Steve Nash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjGzNrMcXI&feature=related - Shot blocking Omeka Okafor (not very in depth)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS5tnGAC2NE&feature=related - Post moves Carlos Boozer (not the best catalogue of moves or the best explanations, but covers some basic/intermediate moves)

Here are some videos that are useful to more advanced players:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thvTgiAyI5g - Shooting Ray Allen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTX67oKzjUA&feature=related - Shooting Sam Cassel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP2Id-YQ4jY&feature=related - Defense Bruce Bowen

PM me with any ideas for new Guides

This post was edited by RewtheBrave on Feb 3 2010 01:41pm