Pigs do fly?
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When have you’ve ever heard a coach tell one of his players not to dunk so hard?
We can just call him sir Doka.
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Really, no joka?
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So…he can dunk. Now he better start practicing FTs or we will see opponents using the “poke-a-Doke” and sending him to the line.
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JayHawkFanToo said:
So…he can dunk. Now he better start practicing FTs or we will see opponents using the “poke-a-Doke” and sending him to the line.
I’m afraid practicing them will not help. The shot is just ugly, even Shaq’s looked better
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@BeddieKU23 @JayHawkFanToo Only solution is Rick Barry style. But no coach ever insists on that.
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That’s actually a pretty good idea but you are also right that it probably won’t happen. Interesting idea though because shooting them normally, I can’t see him even breaking 55% over a season.
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HighEliteMajor said:
@BeddieKU23 @JayHawkFanToo Only solution is Rick Barry style. But no coach ever insists on that.
Louisville’s Onuaku 2 years ago switched to the Rick Barry style and went from 46% to 58% with the switch. Not exactly ground-breaking numbers.
Doke makes Josh J look like Ray Allen at the line
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Maybe every time Doke gets fouled resulting in FT’s we can decline the penalty!
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Going from 46% to 58% is actually a pretty hefty jump. That’s basically a quarter more makes over the season. If a guy gets to the line 150 times (Josh got to the line over 170 times last year). That’s an 18 point swing on the season. That’s a legitimate difference, particularly with the existence of the one and one in college. We’re talking about half a point per game - you won’t find much that can move the needle like that.
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26% improvement? I’ll take it.
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justanotherfan said:
Going from 46% to 58% is actually a pretty hefty jump. That’s basically a quarter more makes over the season. If a guy gets to the line 150 times (Josh got to the line over 170 times last year). That’s an 18 point swing on the season. That’s a legitimate difference, particularly with the existence of the one and one in college. We’re talking about half a point per game - you won’t find much that can move the needle like that.
I should have included how many attempts Onuaku had which gives some more perspective.
In 17 minutes as a Sophomore he was 14-30 coming off the bench for the 46%. He played 600 ish minutes
In 24 minutes as a Jr and a starter he was 33-56 from the line for the 58%. He played over 700 minutes
Doke had 29 FT attempts in just under 150 minutes last year in the limited time he played.
Doke, starting, and playing a full season will attempt well over 100 FT’s with his size and aggressive play around the basket. If we used 100 as a baseline and with his season average of 37% last season if he made 12% more on average we are only talking 12 FT’s over the course of the season.
Doke has a broken shot. I’d like to hear what you’d do to fix it as you’ve given excellent breakdowns in the past on shooting.
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I was hoping much more would have been done over the past few months to improve his mechanics. Even with a hurt left hand he still could and should have worked on his form.
What you do is first show him what proper form is (follow through, set height, etc) and have him first master a close to the basket bank shot with proper form. Once he can do that, you turn it into a jump shot and move out. This isn’t rocket science and it really makes me question how the staff addresses the fundamentals. Simply no reason for it to be this bad. None whatsoever. What was he working on all this time? Was there not a coach there or even a teammate to notice a lack of progress? Very strange indeed.
On “poke a Doke”. To intentionally foul someone more than three or four times per game is not a good strategy from a coaching perspective. Unless you have five really good bigs, fouls will mount quickly and it gets the other team closer to the bonus, which in turn is a benefit to the other players who drive the lane and attack and are better shooters.
The only time we would see it is at the end of a game, but even then he may not be in the game.
I am not worried about him getting intentionally fouled. In fact, if teams want to do that more than four times a game, that benefits our team.
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Really good point. They could bring out some scrubs to foul, but that could end badly for them if those players have to stay in that long.
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BeddieKU23 said:
Louisville’s Onuaku 2 years ago switched to the Rick Barry style and went from 46% to 58% with the switch. Not exactly ground-breaking numbers.
I understand why you curbed your enthusiasm. 58% FT shooting still makes a big a sure target for fouling to send him to the strip. But…
Sometimes numbers over focus us on their magnitude and lead us to under recognize their change.
Compare…
Player A: 46% to 58%
Player B: 70% to 82%
Wouldn’t we be lavishing praise on a player that improved his FT shooting from 70% to 82%? Stories would be being written about how the Player B improved so much. What technique did he use? Who taught it to him? And so on.
If a player can improve to 58% from 46%, one has some reason to hope he has the get better gene.
60-65 % may be within his grasp in another season.
FT shooting involves mechanics and mind. There is a lot of interplay between variables of mechanics and mind, also. Often, players (and coaches) get discouraged, because players shooting 200, or 500, free throws a day don’t get better. This lack of improvement with high reps betrays an unimaginative, uninsightful approach to getting better. Worse repetition without effective mechanics and effective mental approach digs the hole deeper. Mechanics and mind need revision ASAP.
Ask yourself why do some consummate athletes in college have such a hard time getting better at free throw shooting?
It is because they have been using the wrong mechanics and/or wrong mental approach they learned early on for so many years by the time they get to KU. Mechanics and mind approach I want to address later. Other possible drivers are eyesight needing proper correction and neural nets not yet grown in.
Why can some special coaches (guys that specialize in coaching FT shooting) do such an effective job teaching FT shooting to so many poor free throw shooters and yet not be able to reach some others?
It is because they know a lot about mechanics and mental approach, but NOT everything.
NO. EXPERTS. KNOW. EVERYTHING. EVER.
Doke is such a potentially exceptional player that he must keep seeking out free throw shooting specialists, if Self and staff cannot get him over the hump.
Nothing is written about FT shooting to crib for the umpteenth time from T.E. Lawrence.
Now, about mechanics: mechanics have to be found that fit the morphology and musculature and feasible muscle memory from repetition of each individual player. I worked for years trying to be a better FT shooter in my early teens (I made about 65% and never improved) and then found a coach in high school that actually knew something about FT mechanics. He looked at me for one second and said, “You need to build up the muscle that runs down the back of your arm from your shoulder to your elbow. Also, move your right foot back three inches. Forget everything anyone told you about how to hold the ball. Hold it whatever way feels comfortable. Look at the back of the rim. Hold the ball so your index finger is in line with your left eye (I’m a lefty), release it how ever you like, but make sure the left index finger follows through and points down at the back of the rim at the end. Don’t think about anything, except what I told you, until you don’t even have to think about that. Walk up to the line like you own it. Bounce it once and shoot it. Next.” This was a session right before school let out for summer. I came back a 75% FT shooter.
I talked to other players. He told each one something different. Almost every guy was told to work on some muscle, and some repositioning of the feet. Everyone’s FT shooting improved over the summer. I asked him about it later. He was a big tennis player. He said everything in sports started with footwork, then you built upwards based on the right footwork for the person’s body. He said, "Get a persons feet in the right position that gives them the most neutral balance for them, then find the muscle most related to the activity that they are weakest in, and strengthen it; then assess, and seek another muscle related to the activity that might benefit from strengthening to work better with the muscle you already strengthened. He watched you shoot about 5 free throws, then he walked up to you and squeezed your arms, or legs, or shoulders, to feel for muscle, then told you what to do; that’s all there was to it.
I never got better than 75% in high school, though.
Because good as that coach was at mechanics, he lacked insight about mental approach. He could not tailor your mental approach with the effectiveness that he tailored your mechanics.
It was not till early middle age that I asked a sports psychologist I knew about what he taught professional athletes that I began to understand relaxation and broad and narrow focus. I had always just tried to be “relaxed” and “focused.” I didn’t know you could modulate and fine tune these states of mind some. When I tried his exercises, I became an 80 percent FT shooter for awhile, before my muscles and muscle memory began to get old and flabby and imprecise.
My point here is that Doke is a great athlete with the character to play for Bill Self and the desire and will to change cultures and learn a new game and play it at a very high level. With the right mechanics and the right mental approach, there is no reason to think he cannot achieve 60-75% FT if he stays two more years.
And if he gets to 70% from the line, then he can play in an NBA rotation, maybe as a starter, for as long as his joints hold out.
We are looking at a future independently wealthy human being, if he invests in FT mechanics and mental approach now.
Go, Doke, go!!!
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Jaybate is a lefty??? Mind blown.
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Landen Lucas played nearly 900 minutes last year. Withey played over 1100 in his final season at KU. Aldrich was over 950 in his final season at KU.
So I think we can anticipate Doke playing at least 900 minutes as the only true 5 on the team. That’s roughly six times as many minutes as he played last year, so we will cheat and just multiply by six - that gives us 174 FTs.
Let’s say Doke shoots a shade better from the stripe over the full season - 42% instead of the 37% in the smaller sample, or 73 total makes.
If Doke could shoot 58% instead (101 makes), that’s 28 extra points, or nearly one a game. There’s nobody on this board that would deny that’s massive, especially because it takes away the option to simply foul him around the rim. College teams don’t have the depth of talent to put in a scrub for several minutes just to foul Doke. He’s so strong that if they put in a scrub that isn’t able to be physical with him, he may score anyway, at which point the foul is just giving away points (both because he will make some FTs and also because it gets KU in the bonus quicker).
The key is getting above 55%. This isn’t the NBA, where teams can strategically use fouls because their end of bench guys can hold their own for a few minutes, while most 12th and 13th men at the D1 level cannot.
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If Doke cannot get better, then he should do what he did in the one Italy game (when he received the long pass)–toss the ball to the backboard, then dunk the FT for 2 points!
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If Doke can just finish around the rim (no layups, just dunks) it will be very tough to take a lot of fouls on him. He’s so strong, that he likely can finish through contact if he is on the way up, and teams won’t want to just take fouls if he’s not going to the line because it just gets us to the bonus quicker.
Of course, down the stretch, teams will probably always take fouls because a Doke dunk is a sure thing - a Doke FT is… not.
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EdwordL said:
If Doke cannot get better, then he should do what he did in the one Italy game (when he received the long pass)–toss the ball to the backboard, then dunk the FT for 2 points!
Wilt made them change the rules for FTs. He used to take a step to the line and go up with his finger roll. Can’t jump forward any more. If Doke puts it off the backboard without hitting the rim, it is a violation and ball out to the other team.
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@justanotherfan good post. People overestimate poke a dok, imo.
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Doke will have to be like Shaq in that he will have to do his damage in the first 36 or 37 minutes of the game, then defer to a perimeter closer (probably either Newman or Graham) down the stretch since he is a weak FT shooter. Obviously that’s a very workable gameplan, but Doke has to understand that his touches will be limited in the last few minutes of close games unless his FT shooting improves because college teams absolutely will just foul him with under 2 minutes in the game, knowing they can’t stop him in close.
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The “poke-a-Doke,” my version of the hack-a-Shaq can and has been effective under the right conditions. Here is a good write up on the concept with actual cases when it did and did not work. If Doke can get his FT average to 60% or better then it becomes a moot point.
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@JayHawkFanToo poke a doke, lol. that’s great man
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Should I get a trademark like three-peat?
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mayjay said:
EdwordL said:
If Doke cannot get better, then he should do what he did in the one Italy game (when he received the long pass)–toss the ball to the backboard, then dunk the FT for 2 points!
Wilt made them change the rules for FTs. He used to take a step to the line and go up with his finger roll. Can’t jump forward any more. If Doke puts it off the backboard without hitting the rim, it is a violation and ball out to the other team.
Then, I suppose that he could do what Aaron Craft tried to do against KU at the end of a close game: Craft deliberately missed the back end of two FTs by hitting the rim and attempting to rebound and score a 2-pt bucket; it didn’t work and KU won the game, but it was a game try by Craft to get the tie and go to OT as time was running out.
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@EdwordL Teams have done it successfully in last second FT situations trailing by 2 with one FT. KU did it successfully once in a late-season game sometime in 1975, I believe. But it is usually set up for someone besides the shooter (who should be blocked out) to get the carom. We had 6-10 Danny Knight, 6-10 Rick Suttle, and 6-9 Donnie von Moore in those years to get rebounds. A bit more size available than Preston and Lightfoot trying to grab an intentional miss of Doke’s.
