How Can Rondo (and you!) Improve His Free Throw Shooting?

Rondo is only shooting 41% on free throws this season and 62.1% for his career. You might think he is just a poor natural free throw shooter, but a closer look at his career splits reveals something:


October: 15 made, 29 attempted = 51.7%
November: 73 made, 145 attempted = 50.3%
December: 105 made, 156 attempted = 67.3%
January: 111 made, 176 attempted = 62.5%
February: 101 made, 170 attempted = 59.4%
March: 110 made, 156 attempted= 70.5%
April: 74 made, 116 attempted= 63.7%


This trend to warm up by mid December holds steady in every one of his seasons. While he still is not a great free throw shooter, if he was putting more effort into free throws during the off-season, he probably would be around 64.7% for his career (the average of free throws not in October or November, not a huge difference, but a pretty modest bump.) And it is likely that the extra work he put in would compound over the years.


Now let's take a look at his shot:

Basketball Drills

I was going to do a video of some basketball drills that have helped me improve, especially dribbling drills, over the last 2 months, but I was looking online and there are just some people WAY more qualified with better drills than I have (I hope to start adding these drills this week, I will let you know how good they are.)


The ones I liked the most and ones you will find most practical at any level of your game are those by Expert Village. Just type in "expert village basketball" (apparantly they have a bunch of other videos online) on youtube.


If you are ready for some advanced moves (if you have any doubt that you are, then you are not) look at Mike Lee videos. You should only do these (guestimation) after you have been practicing dribbling about 5 hours a week for one or two years.

How Rusty Do You Get After Taking Some Time Off Basketball and What Can You Do About It?

This morning I made it to the court for the first time since I played ball with the guys at the Y on Sunday (I have cartilage degeneration in my left knee that acts up sometimes.) I was disappointed not only that I had to stop after 25 minutes because my knee started to hurt again, but also disappointed that in 5 short days my dribbling skills had rusted to revert to a point I was at probably 2 and 1/2 or 3 weeks ago ( I rust quickly but also tend to get back in the groove quickly, too.)

How rusty do you get after missing some time from basketball?

The answer to this question often depends on what sort of base you have. The longer you have played consistently, the less rust you are going to have and the quicker the rust will come off once you get to play again.


In the NBA, we have seen players that seem to bounce back from serious injuries immediately (Chris Paul) and players who may take even years to get back into form (Kevin Garnett.) This rebound has to do somewhat with age, but also with the type of injury {Paul had a tear, usually easier to come back from (though also more serious in that it is can more easily lead to another serious injury) than wear and tear injuries like Garnett's.)

How do you rebound from injuries and time off?