When deciding on what types of skills to work on with a specific position player, I tend to study what most players do. It is important to get under the hood and prioritize the types of specific shots a player takes. The worst thing that you can do is fly blind and just make stuff up without watching what the majority high level players do.
In today’s Blog Post I am going to take look at Kawhi Leonard and the shots that he took in last night’s games vs The L.A. Lakers. Kawhi is one of my favorite players to watch , and has been the goto player to show the players that I work with , because he is so simple and to the point. I remember in Summer League with The Mavericks and we had a second round pick but the name of Ricky Ledo. Ricky was a talented player out of Providence,RI that we drafted in the Second Round. Ricky was very ISO DRIBBLE oriented that at times made the game hard on him. The morning after one of our games I sat Ricky down and showed him clips of Kawhi when he played for The Spurs. What I wanted Ricky to do is slow down and simplify his game like Kawhi’s.
In this Article I will breakdown 4 of his shots that he took to give you something to think about when planning your own development. Let’s get to work!!
BETWEEN THE LEGS PULL UP JUMPER
Kawhi makes a simple Between the Legs drive and pull up jumper in the paint. Pay attention to how he changes speeds on the move to keep his defender guessing… He uses his shoulder to make contact with the defender to get extra separation from his defender to set up the stepback jumper.
BACKDOWN JUMP SHOT
Kawhi is one of the closest players to Kobe/MJ in the post for a wing player that I have ever seen. He uses his strong frame to backdown Toscano-Anderson and create separation to get to his jumper. Pay attention to how he takes his time and doesn’t rush. He sets his defender up perfectly to get to his kill spot and shoot the jumper in the lane.
WING SPOT UP 3PT SHOT
For Kawhi it isn’t about just running towards the ball all of the time. He is a highly effective player and impacts winning because he can dominate the ball at times and score at will, or he can run to a spot and get the ball rotated to him and make a play. For player’s at any level they really need to understand this concept. Here he sprints the floor and trails in transition, he sees that his teammate needs space so he fades out to the wing. The ball gets skipped to him and he calmly steps into the catch for the jumper.
WIDE PIN DOWN JUMPER
Pay Attention to Kawhi and how he changes speeds coming off the pin down to get open. He doe’s a good job of setting LeBron up. On the catch he sets his feet pauses VERY BRIEFLY
IN CLOSING
It is very important for players to watch full games of their favorite players to see what types of shots they routinely get in games. For me it isn’t the ISO move that a player will take every 3-4 games that I will work on and stress with my clients. It is the majority of shots that a player at their position gets on a nightly basis. Our game is filled with simple plays that are effective to impacting winning. It is important for our young players to understand why great players do what they do. As coaches it has to be about educating players and building them into winning players.
Thank you for reading my content and if you need to get in touch with me ask questions about my Video Breakdown Service, please do so my emailing me at mike@hoopconsultants.com
