Purpose
Now that we know how the game of basketball works, we get to do the fun part! We get to test out our theory that doing a routine before shooting a free-throw helps you increase your percentage. To do this I first got a couple of friends, ranging from non basketball players, players committed to the point of addiction, and nearly everywhere in between. Once I got them, I brought them down to the school gym; that is where they could be more focused opposing to the outside court with a double rim and wind. After that I have them warm up so that they will be ready to go for when it is their turn to shoot their free throws.
Then I have the first person shoot fifteen free-throws without a routine, starting on their first make. After they finished their fifteen shots, I recorded how many they made out of fifteen and found the percentage. After that I had them shoot the same amount of free throws, in the same place, but with a routine. Then, obviously, I do the same thing I did before, write down how many they made out of fifteen, calculate the percentage, and record my data. Then I thank them for participating and repeat the process over and over again for each person.
I did this all during last my last period class, spanish, because we were just going to watch a movie. So I asked Mrs. Butters If I could do my “experiment” downstairs, in the gym. The next day, I had basketball practice, so I could test out my little brother, Ben, before my practice started. I also tested members of my basketball team at another gym. I made sure the shots were taken with a regulation size ball, and from a regulation length free throw line (15 feet from the rim), and a regulation height goal, 10 feet.
Getting my results was not at all easy. I had to find time where some friends and I could go to the gym and do the experiment, also while the gym was unoccupied by people and the basketball hoop was down. My first attempt to do the test was in Biology class. Mr. Joseph said that he’d rather not use up class time to do that when we could be learning, which was totally understandable. My next attempt was in Physical Education, or P.E.. I had talked to Coach Tucker before his class with us, asking if some of my classmates and I could use his class time to test my theory. He agreed to my proposal but must have misheard me. He said that I asked if I could use two people to test. So I chose Anson and Georgia, because they were on the school basketball teams.
The next problem came up when we went to the side of the gym we were going to shoot on and the elementary kids were having lunch. I brought this problem to Coach Tucker and he suggested we did it on the hoop outside. We tried to do it there, but the conditions did not exactly meet my hopes and expectations. The hoop outside, compared to the gym’s hoop, has a much smaller backboard and the rim is a double rim. A double rim is exactly what it sounds like. It is basically two rims stacked on top of each other, which makes it much harder to make a shot. On top of those problems, the wind was blowing on and off, making it very unpredictable. So sadly, after much thought, I chose to discard those results, as they were inaccurate because of the conditions. And as I said before I got to do the test later in ideal conditions in the gym.
