Kawhi’s Lower Body — Good Things

Kawhi.SDSU’s lower body action pre-, during-, and post-shot was quite consistent and close to the ideal of what you would want: he gathers quickly in a hip-width stance on the balls of his feet with bouncy knees, which provides the best combination of balance and explosiveness for elevating into a jumper. Comparing this to the latest version, Kawhi.NBA, the lower body of Kawhi looks extremely similar. This can be seen when comparing various sideview clips of Kawhi shooting in college to Kawhi shooting during his professional tenure.

Kawhi.SDSU pull-up midrange jumper

Kawhi.NBA pull-up midrange jumper

Kawhi.SDSU pull-up three

Kawhi.NBA Finals three

The previous points and clips also illustrate the amount of elevation Kawhi got, and still gets, on his jumper. This is YUGE. Elevating not only literally allows Kawhi to be higher above the defender’s outstretched contesting hand, but it also means he’s potentially getting quite a bit of power transference from his muscular and springy legs to shoot the ball up and out to the hoop…

…AND REMEMBER: the power for shooting the ball should come from your lower body, which means you are shooting while still on the way up — a la Wardell Stephen “Steph” Curry II — NOT from your upper body.

Lower Body — Things That Needed Improvement

Now, if we look at Kawhi’s shot from his SDSU days, in regards to when he released/shot the ball…he did it when he was already on the way down! It’s subtle, but if you watch the below YouTube video of Kawhi.SDSU highlights, you’ll notice practically any time Kawhi shot, he released the ball as he descended back to Earth.

I’ve started this video at 29s, when Kawhi takes his first jumper

What this meant is that Kawhi wasn’t getting the power to actually shoot the ball from the explosive elevation he gained from his legs. In fact, it was completely lost as he was shooting on the way down. This is important to keep in mind for when we get to Kawhi’s ‘Upper Body — Things That Needed Improvement’ shooting technique.

Upper Body — Good Things

Kawhi.SDSU did a fantastic job of having his shooting pocket – the place he gets the ball to prior to actually shooting it – high and out of reach of defenders. It was well above his head, albeit behind his head, which we will touch on in the next section.

This can be seen best here:

Sideview of Kawhi shooting during college

And here:

Kawhi.SDSU shooting a three

In addition, Kawhi was, and still is, quite quick in getting the ball up to his shooting pocket, which is higher than most defenders’ contesting hand.

Kawhi quickly getting the ball to his high shooting pocket above Joel Embiid’s outstretched hand (I’m sorry, Philly fans)

These two points are great for a myriad of reasons, because if you are slow on getting the ball up to shoot and your shooting pocket is low:

the defence has more time to react to you shooting, thus meaning you’re probably getting your sh*t sent PACKING more often than you’d like. the defence doesn’t have to respect you, meaning they can cheat more towards your teammates, which clogs driving lanes for other players. you are limiting your own driving opportunities. The defence can sag off you when you have the ball as you are slow to shoot. This is the opposite of what you want! Playing tight on you is actually what you want, because if someone is playing tightly on you, it will be easier to drive through either of their hips/thighs to attack the rim. Now that you’re driving by them… they can’t guard both your move (making jumpers) and your counter-move (driving by them) at the same time. They have to pick their proverbial poison! And this right here is why so many greats — like Shaq and Kobe, in the YouTube videos below— talk about having one great move, then having one great counter-move. No one single player will be able to stop both as long as the moves are counters of each other. It is physically impossible.

Shaq speaking on having two great moves that are relative opposites of each other

Kobe expounding on the move-counter move strategy

By now, I hope you understand why it’s so imperative to be able to quickly get the ball up to a high shooting pocket, like Kawhi does.

Upper Body — Things That Needed Improvement

This is where one can really see how the new software of Kawhi.NBA is far superior to the older software of Kawhi.SDSU.

As is best seen in profile angles of Leonard’s jumper below, Leonard used to ‘sling’ the ball well above and behind the front vertical plane (his face!) of his head before shooting. Doing this caused his upper body to slingshot the ball instead of purely shooting it.

Kawhi.SDSU slinging ball behind his face before shooting it

College Kawhi shooting the ball from behind his face

This caused it to look as if Kawhi was throwing his butt slightly backwards when shooting, and he was. But this was happening because he was slinging his body forward to ‘shoot’ the ball at the rim; instead, one wants to shoot the ball up and out — not forward and at. It’s also especially important that the rest of your body isn’t wildly moving in any direction besides up in one smooth motion. As you can see from Kawhi.SDSU shooting clips, this was not the case.

Obviously, you don’t want any extraneous movement of your body as this will throw off the trajectory of your shot; if your body is moving in a funky way, it’s also harder to consistently reproduce your shot form, which is a massive component of great shooters’ shots: consistent form that is easily replicated over and over and over. And, if your body is moving in a funky way, instead of shooting smoothly up in one motion, you’ll naturally compensate in other areas of your physical shooting form, which will only cause more issues with the way you shoot the ball — just like compensating in one area of life takes resources away from other areas.

Addendum to the previous point: to this day, you can see that Kawhi’s shot doesn’t have a ton of arc to it. Probably a remnant of the slingshot method he used to employ.

I believe Kawhi.SDSU was using this slingshot technique because he was shooting on the way down — SEE above explanation of this in the last main point of ‘Lower Body — Things That Needed Improvement’. Kawhi.SDSU had exactly NONE of that sweet, sweet elastic energy from his bouncy legs transfer to his shot. It’s sad when this happen with players. You may as well not be jumping! I mean, besides to elevate above the defence, of course. And, if you are getting all your power from shooting from your arms, you are going to tire more quickly than if you are getting the power from your stronger and bigger leg muscles.

Since Kawhi.SDSU was shooting on the way down, this could explain why he adopted a slingshot technique like those used in some archaic siege weapons. The actual power for shooting the ball had to come from somewhere! And, if my English ancestry and recent watch of Netflix’s “The King” has taught me anything — and it pretty much f*cking hasn’t — trebuchets were powerful weapons in their day.

However, this is a chicken-egg type scenario: did Kawhi slingshot because he was shooting on the way down and needed that power to get the ball to the hoop or did Kawhi shoot on the way down because he didn’t need the power from his legs due to his slingshot way of shooting?

Finally, aspiring coaches and players, remember this if nothing else:

The upper body technique is what smoothly guides the ball to the centre of the hoop, whereas power for getting the ball to the hoop comes from the lower body in conjunction with timing your shooting release point.

Especially work on using the strength of the lower body during shooting, not after you’ve already shot: on your way up is the optimal time to shoot the ball as the momentum/kinetic energy from your extending lower body will fully transfer to the ball. Think about loading a spring then letting it go! That bouncy/elastic energy is what you get from properly executed lower body shooting technique. If you combine that with good upper body technique and releasing your shot on the way up, you’ll then be most efficiently transferring the energy from your legs into getting the ball to the rim.