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Cody Williams was working out with Utah Jazz assistant coach Chad Forcier before one of their games on the road last week, and they were going through shooting drills that gave me flashbacks to working on shooting in high school.
He was doing what one of my former coaches used to call “leg rolls.” Basically, to encourage a tight elbow and a loaded wrist (watch this clip to see what I mean and to see the motion in action), you get good hand placement on the ball, roll the ball up your leg until your wrist is in the right position, add your guide hand to the ball, then keep your form through your shot and follow through.
Williams was taking all of his pregame 3-pointers with a leg roll prior to shooting.
“Sometimes you just need to reset,” Williams said of the work with Forcier. “It’s like, hey, let’s go back to the basics, get the fundamentals right.”
It’s not a secret that Williams has been struggling. This season he is shooting just 15.4% from 3-point range and averaging just 4.1 points per game. And his place in the rotation has been up and down.
So not only is Williams looking to just get back to the basics with his shot, but he’s also focusing, in-game, on things that are more under his control — defense and moving off the ball.
Williams has shown that he can be a really effective slasher and cutter and he’s great when he’s giving effort in transition. Also, he’s a smart defender. So rather than relying on his shooting to keep him on the court, he’s trying to put his energy where he has a better chance of success right now.
“I want Cody to continue to focus on defending at a high level, applying pressure to the rim offensively, whether that’s driving the ball or cutting, and then we can talk about his shooting,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. “If you look at some of the games this year where he’s played well, he’s doing it with defense and applying pressure to the rim. I think his improvement as a cutter has been as important as anything, so that’s where I want his focus to stay while he’s really working hard on the shooting.”
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