When driving to the hoop in basketball, you should always try to have your shoulders, especially your inside shoulder, lower than your defenders’. This affords you inside position and an easier path to take a straight line to the basket. It can also let you position your back in a way that it walls off your defender from stealing or blocking the ball.
It is simple basketball and something all great scorers practice, from the NBA to the schoolyard.
This same skill can carry over to other athletics as well, with a great example coming in lacrosse. When a player has the ball and is aiming to beat his defender to drive toward the net, if he or she is able to kept their inside shoulder lower for leverage, it will make it more difficult for the defense player to stop the offense player slipping right by them. Additionally, keeping your hips pointed at the goal as you go around your defender is also important, as it helps guide you in a straight line toward the net, as illustrated by former Johns Hopkins attackman Wells Stanwick.
The emphasis of attacking the goal in a straight line is present in both sports, and for similar reasons, too.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. When attempting to beat another player toward a particular spot, in this case the basket or net, taking the fastest possible route makes it more difficult for the defense to react and rotate, not to mention places a strain on your primary defender as he or she has a terrible angle to catch you from behind.
This are both core tenets of each sport and crucial for any expert to understand and execute. There are many similarities between basketball and lacrosse, with skills that can translate perfectly over from one game to the other. This is merely the tip of the iceberg in the parallels these sports share.
