Outdoors I am a mediocre free throw shooter. I hit 50 percent. Indoors I hit about 70 percent. This is close to the NBA average, and divided by my hourly wage it would put me at number one in the league. How can this difference be? Virginia is not that windy. My outdoor free throw shooting is best when dusk is approaching, and the air is hot, thick, and still. (I also feel I play tennis much better indoors, although that is harder to measure.) The Great Outdoors are wonderful, but it is disturbing when the basketball clunks on the rim. Each time I wonder what other life tasks I might perform much better, if only for some simple change in framing.
Addendum: Forget free throws, here are videos of NBA dunks from the recent slam-dunk contest, courtesy of http://kottke.org. My percentage there is the same, indoors or outdoors.
My first guess is that you’re wrong. My second is the shooting background makes it more difficult.
Perhaps it’s the dust on the basketball. Also, it could be how the board and rim are supported.
I shoot from outside and overall have a similar worse experience outdoors. I blame:
1) insanely tight schoolyard rims, which are totally unforgiving
2) difficult backgrounds such as wire fences–I don’t I see the basket as well
3) wind/weather issues and yes, dusty ball/hands
4) greater likelihood of other variabilities–in our village park, for instance, the rims are 9.5 ft high stedda the usual 10
The answer is likely basket height.
My dad had a mini-basketball court built in our backyard, and it had a regulation basket setup. The basket seemed so high that he thought the contractor built it to the wrong height. They measured it and it was exactly 10 feet.
My dad spent most of his basketball play on in public parks playing pickup ball. Municipal parks departments find it easier to just lay a new layer of blacktop on to ones than to dig it up and remove after it wears. This makes the outdoor court as much as 6 inches shorter than an indoor one.
If you are used to indoor courts, and aren’t adjusting the angle of your shot, this makes a big difference.
I think that the NBA players are pretty pathetic if an economics professor can free throw just as well.
Yes I do shoot better on cloudy days.
My free throws shooting is better indoors as well. I think the higher quality and consistent height and give of indoor rims is certainly a factor. Recently I’ve been working on my free throws by only shooting 2 at a time, as opposed to shooting 10 or 20 in a row. I haven’t had a chance to see if I’m still much better indoors when only shooting 2 at a time.
I also feel as if I play better tennis inside, but I wonder whether it just seems as if the ball is going faster and because the thump of the ball hitting the racket is louder. Of course, wind and sun should have a more distracting effect in tennis than in basketball.
In particular, a lot of outdoor rims are the god-awful double-thick type. I suppose the idea is that they don’t want the rim broken by dunkers, but any decent rim/backboard combo made these days doesn’t have that problem. On the double rim, you basically need to swish to make the shot; I’ve only seen a ball bounce over the backboard once or twice indoors, but it happens a lot outdoors on the tight rim.
The rims are much tighter on outside hoops.
Back in the ’80s, Hubie Brown used to say that the rims at the Chicago arena (before the United Center; maybe Joe Lousis Arena?) were the tightest in the league. I’ve never shot hoops there, but my friends and I got lots of chuckles with that line.
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