Why most basketball coaches at all levels don’t try to improve players shooting percentages?????????

The answer to that question could be the following:

Could it be because at all levels many coaches and their staff members do not have or cannot demonstrate the fundamental skills successfully enough themselves?

Many who try could be just teaching theory not application by not demonstrating the shots that they are trying to teach.

Especially at the college level as many coaches seem to coach like some college professors teach, mostly all theory and little application.

They are of the “do as I say, not as I do'” philosophy of teaching or coaching when it should be just the opposite as today’s society is a “Do as I do, not as I just say” society. In order to get people to buy into what you are teaching they want to make sure and have or see proof that you know what you are talking about what you the coach can do what they want you, the student to do.

I know this personally having run many basketball shooting camps, given individual shooting lessons and coached my players for many years how to improve their individual shooting skills. I know that we got better results when I demonstrated the shooting skills desired than by just telling the shooters what I wanted them to do.

The student shooters told me that I had much more credibility to them when I was able to demonstrate successfully the skills I was trying to teach them and it made it much easier for them to understand and learn.

I personally feel whether it is at any level of the game that many, if not most of the coaches or their staffs don’t do much coaching to improve the shooting skills of their players.

When I was officiating middle school, high school. college and AAU games from 2000-2014 I saw a lot of poor shooting techniques and fundamentals especially at the foul line that could have been corrected very quickly and easily. Yet, it was never done as I would see the same poor skills from the same players from the same teams at the end of the season that I saw at the beginning and in the middle.

Here are the most common mistakes I would see foul shooters make when officiating and when watching games on TV or online today.
1. Feet and shoulders not square to basket
2. Aiming for the front or back of the rim
3. Dribbling on the line
4. NOT ENOUGH LEGS INTO SHOT
5. Releasing ball before legs are straight
6. Releasing ball after legs are straight
7. Not staying on toes until shot is made or missed
8. No foul shooting ritual

Many coaches and their staffs today at all levels may not have the confidence or skill to improve their players shooting skills and could be one of the answers to all these low scoring games. because of poor shooting skills Or, it could be “Coaching with EGO”, not wanting their players and assistant coaches to know that they need help in order to help their players improve their shooting skills..

Just know when I was coaching, if my staff or I could not demonstrate a certain skill we would find someone that could if we needed to. That is called “Coaching without Ego”.

In fact, if we were scouting an opponent and we saw something that worked well like an out-of-bounds play under the offensive basket, we would put it in for our team and name it the name of the school that used it successfully.

Then we would run that same play when we played the team we got it from and call it out by the name of the school we got it from when scouting them. Giving credit where credit is due.

You would think that today with the 3 point shot, the clock stopping every time the whistle blows instead of only on fouls, timeouts and jump balls prior to 1962 teams would score at least the same if not more than they did prior to the clock situation change in 1962 and the 3 point shot coming in in the mid 80’s. But overall it han’t and maybe it is that coaches don’t do the needed teaching of shooting skills as much today as they did prior to the 80’s.