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Fixing Rondo’s Jumper |
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One Tweak Will Make Him A Threat |
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By John Karalis
(all photos courtesy Associated Press & NBAE/Getty Images) |
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I love Rajon Rondo. As far as I’m concerned, he is the point guard of the Celtics future. But for all the things Rajon does so well, the lack of a consistent jump shot often hurts the Celtics. Defenses can pack it in and tell Rajon to try to beat them with the J. That is something he just can’t do yet. And until he does figure out how to nail a few jumpers when the defense sags (or drops into a zone), the Celtics offense will struggle. But there is one tweak that I believe Rondo can make that will change his game. And it all has to do with those freakish hands of his. I’ll admit, this all started with a comment from Mike Gorman during a Celtics telecast. He asked Tommy Heinsohn about something he’d heard about guys with big hands struggling with their jumpers. Tommy blew the comment off… but I think Gorman was onto something. So I took a closer look at how Rajon shoots his jumper. And what do you know… Mike was right. |
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Rajon shoots his jumper like a jai ali player propels the ball. The basketball touches EVERY INCH of Rondo’s hand as it’s launched toward the hoop. That hand of his takes up almost half of the basketball. When you consider that a jump shot is influenced by the tiniest amount of pressure or variance in delivery, it’s really no wonder that Rondo’s jumper is off. It’s got so many places where something can go wrong. If the ball travels from his palm to finger tips even SLIGHTLY differently than it should, the ball will hit the side of the rim. If ONE of his fingers exerts a little more pressure as it flicks the ball to the rim, the shot will be off. |
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Look at how much of the palm is on the basketball. That picture to the bottom left is especially telling. When a player first cradles a basketball going up for the shot, it’s not uncommon to see a bunch of palm on the ball. But when that guide hand comes off and the player begins to release the ball, the ball should be off the palm. In fact, you don’t want much of the |
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hand on the ball at all. You only want enough of the fingers on the ball to get the proper rotation when you snap your wrist to release it. Your legs will generate the power for your jumper, your arm (if the elbow is in) will make it go straight, and your guide hand will make sure the ball isn’t jostling around in your shooting hand. Your palm… well… it’s only gonna cause problems. |
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When Rondo shoots the ball, his hand starts out almost flat (as you can see in the picture to the right, from his Kentucky days). That means when he shoots the ball, his hand is almost traveling a full 180 degrees. His palm starts out almost facing the ceiling, and it ends up facing the floor. That’s WAAAY too much motion in the jumper. The ball has no choice but to start out flat in the palm, and touch a lot of the hand before it’s released. When you consider the size of Rondo’s hands, there is too much that can go wrong here. |
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So the fix seems to be simple. There are actually two things he can do. He could keep his guide (left) hand up there a little longer. That will at least keep things in line longer. But when you dart in and out of the lane like Rondo does, that’s not always possible. And with the size of his fingers, it’s possible that might do more harm than good. If he wraps that guide hand on the ball at all, then it could make things worse. No… the key to fixing Rondo’s jumper is getting as much of his shooting hand off the ball as possible. |
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Check out the difference in ball position when Mike Dunleavy, a guy who is known for an outside shot, takes his guide hand off the ball. The only part of his hand touching the ball is essentially his finger tips. Look at that Rondo picture from Kentucky again. It’s all palm. Now look at Dunleavy’s hand position. It is, at most, at a 45 degree angle. Rondo’s hand is still flat. Dunleavy is a technically sound shooter. If you let him shoot 100 uncontested jumpers in a shoot-around, he’d probably bury almost all of them. Aside from the rest of his proper form (arm position, foot position, shoulders square) he has a picture-perfect release. At this point in the jump shot, your body has worked in concert to get that ball from your hand to the bottom of the net. Your hand’s job is merely to put a little backspin on the ball, and to actually propel the ball through the air. For that job, you only need to use your finger tips. In fact, the best shooters can probably go for almost the whole game without the ball touching the bottom pad of your hand. But Rajon Rondo ALWAYS has the pad of his hand on the ball. The funny thing here is that with the size of Rajon’s hands, he… more than ANYONE… can probably control the ball with just his finger tips. |
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Caron Butler, Gerald Wallace, and ESPECIALLY Ray Allen are all capable of lighting it up from the outside. Each of these shots illustrates how the ball, at varying points before the release, never really touches the bottom of the hand. The best jump shooters get their power from their jump, their accuracy from their arm and shoulder position, and their rotation from a simple flick of the wrist. The hand does nothing but hold the ball. But if you’re not careful, the one part of your body that’s supposed to do the least can actually affect your shot the most. If Rajon Rondo spends this off season learning how to shoot the ball from his finger tips rather than from the palm of his hand, he will become a scoring threat. If he can simply learn how to get the ball off of his palm… and flick the ball rather than have it travel the entire length of his hand… he will become enough of a jump shooting threat that opposing teams will no longer be able to pack it in and sit in a zone. Think of the ramifications of that. No more easy triple teams of Al Jefferson. Easier rotation of the basketball which will open up Delonte, Wally and Pierce. And more one-on-one defense, which Rondo can almost always beat off the dribble. And with no more zone, that lane is wide open. That means more layups for Rajon if guys don’t collapse and help. It means more dunks for the post players and jumpers for the wings if guys do. And all of that will happen if Rajon simply shoots the ball with his finger tips instead of his whole hand. It’s just one, simple little tweak… but it will get HUGE results |