It's not occult magic, it's straight science: Lots of
interesting
things have arrived and one of these is the basketball
season. Two engineers have figured out the best
way to shoot a free throw, a frequently underappreciated
skill that gets more important as the
game
clock winds down.
Chau Tran and Larry Silverberg say, "To get a swish rather
than a brick, you need the best possible conditions for
releasing the basketball from your hand." They used hundreds
of thousands of three-dimensional computer simulations of
basketball free-throw trajectories to arrive at their
conclusions. After running the simulations, Tran and
Silverberg arrived at a number of major recommendations to
improve free-throw shooting.
The engineers assumed that the basketball player doing the
shooting was 6 feet 6 inches tall, and that he released the
ball 6 inches above his head, so the "release height" was set
to 7 feet. First, they say that shooters should launch the
shot with about three hertz of back spin. That translates to
the ball making three complete backspinning revolutions
before reaching the hoop. Back spin deadens the ball when it
bounces off the rim or backboard, giving the ball a better
chance of settling through the net.
Where to aim? Tran and Silverberg say you should aim for the
back of the rim, leaving about 2 inches between the ball and
the back of the rim. According to the simulations, aiming for
the center of the basket decreases the probabilities of a
successful shot by almost 3%.
The ball should be launched at 52 degrees to the horizontal,
meaning that the shot should, at the highest point in its arc
to the basket, be less than 2 inches below the top of the
backboard. Free-throw shooters should also release the ball
as high above the ground as possible.
Silverberg says, "Our recommendations might make even the
worst free-throw shooters break 60% from the free-throw
line. A little bit of physics and a lot of practice can make
everyone a better shooter from the free-throw line."
A new study suggests that officials often are NOT objective
in their efforts to be fair to both teams. An examination of
365 major conference games played during the 2004-05
college men's basketball season found a clear pattern of an
increased probability of a foul on the team with fewer fouls,
the visiting team and the team that was leading.
Kyle J. Anderson says, "Whether consciously or
subconsciously, officials seem to show a pattern where they
try to make the number of fouls called on each team come
out approximately even. That is seen as being objective or
fair."
To learn more,
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here.
Art credit: Dreamstime.com
