And yet, Carrington had only played two minutes through the first three games of the season. Even with playing time picking up a little recently, the questions remain.Īfter two years with the Connecticut Sun, Carrington felt like a fixture off the bench for this team. The team picked up her option, tying her to the team through the next two years should they so choose. Dijonai Carrington had started to find her way in her first two seasons. So let’s take a lesson from real snipers to become a better basketball sniper, “aim small, miss small.When a player makes it past that point and starts showing signs of promise, it feels like it may finally be their time. If you say Steph Curry is the best sniper in the league, most basketball fans will know exactly what you’re talking about. There’s a clear parallel between military snipers and basketball snipers. Once you return to the normal bat, it feels as light as a feather. It’s like swinging a weighted baseball bat. When you go back to counting makes regularly, you might find your shooting percentages have improved. Over time, that precision and concentration will add up and you’ll find yourself improving faster than everyone around you. If you consistently aim for a higher bar (or in this case, a smaller target), you’re forced to be more precise for every rep. That’s the power of raising your standard. And even though it felt like I was doing a terrible job I was actually doing very well if my standard had been to simply make shots. By aiming for swishes, I had raised my standard and forced myself to be more precise. I was making shots! The whole drill I was actually shooting the ball very well, but I wasn’t reaching my new expectation. Shooting free throws after the drill, I was able to get some perspective. After I took a deep breath and calmed down for a second, I finished the drill fairly quickly. I’m usually an even-keeled guy, but there’s something about swish-only shooting that can get under your skin. I’m embarrassed to admit that I lost my cool, but it’s true. I grabbed the rebound, screamed at the ball and punted it into the rafters. My count was still at 0 and I started getting angry.Īfter 1 particular make that felt perfect but ended up hitting the back rim, I blew up.

I must’ve made 8 or 9 shots but none of them were swishes and I was already getting tired. I was shooting curl threes and had to swish 4.

Last summer, I was doing a swish-only drill by myself and I lost it. Warning: at some point, you’re going to get really frustrated with swish-only shooting. Especially if you’re shooting on the move, it can get tiring really quickly. It may sound easy, but trust me, it’s tough. So if you were doing a drill where you were going to make 10 shots, you now have to swish 1 to 4. But how much? I’d recommend taking 10-40% of your normal makes depending on your skill level. Obviously, you have to adjust the amount of makes if you’re only going to count swishes. It’s tough to get through a swish-only shooting drill if you’re not fully engaged. It forces you to be more precise and lock in on every shot. If you feel like you’re plateauing, swish-only shooting can help take you to the next level by increasing the difficulty of your workouts. Swish-only shooting is a new challenge that can spark your competitive juices and rev up your level of focus. It’s especially useful when shooting becomes boring and you don’t feel the same thrill from doing a shooting workout. Just try it for a drill and you'll find that you're automatically more focused.īut it works best for players who are already decent/good shooters who want to become great. Is Swish-Only Shooting Appropriate for Me?Īnyone can use swish-only shooting. It’s called Swish-Only Shooting and it’s very simple. I could write a whole article on where to look when you're shooting (and I might in the future) but for now, I want to focus on a training technique that follows the 'aim small, miss small” advice. Aiming big would be to just look at the whole basket. Aiming small would be to choose a rivet on the rim. The idea of “aim small, miss small” has clear parallels to shooting in basketball. But if you miss the shirt, you miss the entire target. If he misses the button by 2 inches, the enemy’s still going down. In one scene, Bradley Cooper is going through sniper training when his instructor gives him a piece of advice that stuck with me, “aim small, miss small.” The instructor tells him to aim for the button on a man’s shirt rather than the whole shirt. The movie American Sniper, follows Bradley Cooper, a legendary Navy Seal who becomes one of the most lethal snipers in American history.

Easy swish sniper