Proposal for a Didactic Aid to Practice the Bank Shots in Basketball

The aim of the paper was to propose a didactic aid to practice and develop bank shots in basketball. Four basketball players (three men and one 13-years old woman) were shooting bank shots from six distances (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 m) and at four angles (90°, 75 °, 45 ° and 25 °) respective to the board. An experimenter positioned behind the transparent backboard recorded the points of impact of 15 successful shots (without touching the rim) for each of the above distances, angles and shooters. With perpendicular shots at the backboard, we identified only negligible dislocation of the set of impact points. With angled shots, the set of impact points tended to move towards the side edge of the board and upwards depending on the angle of the shooter's position to the board and his/her distance. The farther the shooter from the basket and the lower the angle at which the shooter was shooting, the closer the impact point was towards the upper corner of the board. We proposed a very simple and economically viable didactic aid to practice bank shots, consisting of a circle and two slanted ellipses placed on the backboard.