Scientists deconstruct the perfect basketball jump shot

Scientists have deconstructed the perfect basketball jump shot that will allow players to put the ball into the net each time they attempt such a shot.

Washington, Sept 13 : Scientists have deconstructed the perfect basketball jump shot that will allow players to put the ball into the net each time they attempt such a shot.

They say, the secret, - timed to the millisecond - supports the old adage: "Keep your eye on the ball".

"To perform a jump shot well, the player needs to look at the basket for about 350 milliseconds, which is both necessary and sufficient," said lead author Rita Ferraz de Oliveira.

Players do not need to count the time. In practice, this means that players should be looking at the target - orienting their head and eyes to the basket - while airborne until ball release," she said.

As part of her study, De Oliveira and her team at the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences at VU University Amsterdam, tested eight male and nine female expert basketball players. The players represented a mix of low shooters and high shooters.

Low shooters bend their elbows while pointing their shoulders forward, resulting in an upward and forward movement that brings the ball into the individual's field of vision just before release.

High shooters, on the other hand, lift the ball over their heads before extending their elbows to propel the ball toward the basket. At no time during a high shot is the person's vision blocked. The researchers therefore suspected that high shooters would perform better.

During the tests, the researchers let the players shoot under normal conditions.

Then they asked the participants to wear glasses, which obscured their vision for one or two seconds before each shot. Earphones also eliminated sound during some of the experiments, to rule out the influence of non-visual cues.

Findings revealed that both low and high shooters netted balls at about the same rate, since they both managed to look at the basket for at least 350 milliseconds before letting go of the ball.

Obscuring the vision, however, caused most to undershoot, the study revealed.

De Oliveira said, the reason for this was because there is always a constant relationship between a player's viewing angle and the target's location.

"Given that the basket is at a constant height, the closer the player is to the basket, the more he or she has to look upward. This shift is an increased angle, which relates to closer targets, and therefore the player undershoots," De Oliveira said, adding, that darkness often caused people to further lift their gaze subconsciously.

The findings are scheduled for publication in the journal Experimental Psychology, reports Discovery News.

ANI