When the Miami Heat beat the Boston Celtics last night in the NBA conference finals, my 7yo son (and basketball fanatic) and I were crushed. It was such an inspiring series, we’ve now adopted the Heat as our favorite team for the finals, though it is always hard to root against LeBron.
This fascinating article, "How Did the NBA Overlook One of the Best Shooters in Basketball?" by Rob Mahoney, describes one Heat player’s development into a three-point shooting powerhouse. Mahoney illustrates how focused and persistent coaching can transform performance, while also reminding us of just how many people contribute towards any one person's journey.
FWIW, Duncan Robinson (the young three-point shooter) briefly attended Williams College (my alma mater). While it’s well worth reading in its entirety, here is a favorite excerpt:
Before Robinson had played a single game for the Heat summer league team, he was already driving the coaching staff crazy….It was Robinson’s job to shoot when the ball came his way, and yet the undrafted, unproven rookie kept looking for reasons not to.
“At that point, he was shot-faking to death,” says Eric Glass, who coached the Heat in summer league. After imploring Robinson to shoot and getting nowhere, Glass moved to what is now a time-honored tradition for the fitness-obsessed Heat: punishing a shooter’s hesitation with calisthenics….If Robinson so much as blinked on the catch, the summer Heat coaches would stop practice and have him do push-ups.
…This was all part of Miami’s design. The first step for Robinson wasn’t to shed his defender, put the ball on the floor, and make The Right Play™. “No,” Glass says. “You get in there, and when you’re open, you shoot it every single time. That was an evolution that he had to learn.”