The Wisdom of the Granny Shot

credit: Lance King/Getty Images

How Overcoming “Style Creep” Can Help You Succeed Where Others Just Get By

On December 26, 2016, Chinanu Onuaku made his professional basketball debut for the Houston Rockets. It was kind of historic, even though he only spent 8 minutes in the game and scored 6 points.

By all appearances, it was an uneventful game for the young rookie — until about 2:46 left in the game. At that point, Onuaku was fouled, and made his first trip to the foul line.There Onuaku did something that he has been doing for a few years, but few people in attendance at the Toyota Center were prepared to see: he shot his free-throws underhand. He took two granny shots — and sunk both of them.

If you’re even remotely acquainted with basketball, you’re probably aware that nobody shoots the ball underhand. It just isn’t done.And yet, Onuaku is doing it. He’s the first player since Rick Barry — nearly 40 years ago — to do it in the NBA. But why?

That’s actually the wrong question to ask. The better question is why isn’t everyone else doing it? By all accounts, it is — once practiced adequately — a more mechanically sound way to shoot. It’s less prone to the variances in trajectory that you get with conventional one hand, overhead shooting. But don’t take my word for it, take an expert’s word for it:

The underhand throw can also minimize the drift of the ball. “A little sideward nudge at the start of the throw will translate into a big movement toward the end,” says Tom Steiger, a researcher who taught basketball physics at the University of Washington in Seattle….The underhand throw provides better stability than the overhand “because you’re holding the ball with both hands,” Steiger says. This helps players balance the subtle motor muscles in the hands and keeps them more relaxed. The movement of the underhand throw is a simple, easy-to-control upward pendulum motion. By contrast, the more conventional overhand free throw shot involves separate movements of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder that can add errors, Steiger says. “If the ball ends up rolling off one side of your hand even a little bit, you’ll miss.”

What’s Your Granny Shot?

It sounds like a no-brainer: if you want to shoot your free-throws better, shoot underhand. So why don’t players do it? Because it looks silly.

Those who chose to adopt it reaped the benefits. Rick Barry swore by it, and was an 89.3% free-throw shooter. When Wilt Chamberlain used it (briefly) he improved his free-throw shooting to a career-best 61%, including 28/32 in his famous 100-point game.

I’m not going to go in-depth on the granny shot any more here, but a wonderful podcast episode courtesy of Malcolm Gladwell does a great job looking into it.

The reason I bring this up is basically a question: What’s your granny shot? Or, put more specifically:

What thing could you be doing differently, but you’re not — all because it seems to fly in the face of style?

Style Creep

Here’s the thing: no matter what your industry, or what your practice, there is a phenomenon that I like to call style creep. It’s where a practice or a principle gets chosen for largely stylistic — but not functional or goal-related — reasons. And it’s dangerous. It can make us blind to possible advantages that we can reap by breaking with convention.

So if ever there were a way to get ahead in a sea of people trying to get ahead, maybe overcoming style creep is it. But it’s not easy. You have to be willing to mine for advice from others — advice that seems odd, un-sexy, and perhaps too old-school.

Then, you have to be willing to take that un-stylish, un-sexy advice, and be un-stylish and un-sexy by following it. Then you have to be willing to be laughed at, be odd, and be out of step. You have to do that for a while, until eventually, you succeed.

Then you can revel in your success. And as a bonus, once you show how successful your weird, uncool method is — you just might become cool after all. Now that’s pretty cool!

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