Steph Curry is the greatest shooter of all time but he doesn't follow many of the traditional rules of shooting I'm going to break down his shot for him to help you guys understand just how special of a player he is so Steph's greatest difference in his shot is that he has a one motion shot if you don't know what a one motion shot is it's basically a shot where you release the ball as you jump upwards on the other hand the two motion shot is where you bring the ball to your set point and then release it at the top of your junk now 99% of NBA players have two motion shots so let's break this down at a mechanical level here are three of the greatest Shooters of all time now I've paused this video at the precise moment when all three of them are about to release the ball you're going to see here that the angle between MJ's upper and lower arm is at nearly a 90° angle if you want a textbook jumper then look no further than Jordan now play the video a couple more seconds and that jumper is about to put an end to an entire franchise now both clay and Durant's jumpers are a bit more acute than Jordan's but this is mainly because they're shooting from further out either way you'll notice that there's a fair amount of separation between those lower and upper arms each of the shots are relatively textbook jumpers and would make any shooting coach squeal and Delight meanwhile let's move to Curry so here Curry's going to come around his screen and receive the ball but you see this right here this is what separates Curry from the rest he's going to begin his release at this point in time and the angle his arms are going to form is extraordinarily tight almost to the point where he can't bend his upper arm back any further if you compare curage release angle with the other Shooters you're going to find that it's significantly more acute if you imagine it as a spring then it's the equivalent of compressing the spring much further and if you've ever taken physics then you'll know that more distance equals more power and more power means that Curry doesn't have to sacrifice accuracy he made that shot by the way but let's take a look further here's a shot that Curry sunk against the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017 NBA Finals now take a minute to just Revel on how insane the shot is but what makes this one interesting is how high the shot ared I mean for a brief moment the shot isn't even in the frame in fact when you look at the shot as it goes inside the basket it makes a perfect 60° angle with the hoop to put that in perspective this is a shot LeBron made from a similar distance the angle between the ball and the hoop 45° on the dot despite being 6 in shorter and 65 lbs lighter than LeBron he's getting an additional 15° on his shot in fact this shot was so high that it absolutely shattered the recommended entrance angle of 43 to 47° now in reality Steph shot without a 6'8 250 lb Kevin Love chasing him while the buzzer phed to zero is around 46° which makes much more sense but what this shot here demonstrates is one that step shot is extraordinarily versatile and two that he's able to get extraordinary amounts of power on his shot Without Really Trying now part of this is due to that tight angle of his arms but there's another Factor coming into play here which is a staple of what one motion Shooters do the early release you see technically there is no such thing as a pure one motion shot because every shot has two parts the bring up and the release but the timing of each of these movements is what's important here's a look at Kobe Bryant considering that he's shooting free throws it's about as good of a look you're going to get on this form you're going to notice that as he brings the ball up his legs are going to bend then after he gets to his set point he's going to jump off with his legs to release the ball in fact his legs are almost synchronized with his two motions on the bring up he bends and then on the release he jumps but step mechanics are going to work completely differently rather he's going to start off by bending his legs while keeping the ball down then the entire process of bringing the ball up and releasing it is going to occur while he's jumping by executing both motions of his shot so quickly that it essentially turns into one motion and doing it during the jump he's going to get far more power on his jumper now considering that Kobe operated largely within the mid-range makes sense why this shot worked for him because bringing the ball up before the jump allows him to make shots like this but for a three-point demon like Steph it's the other way around now there's a lot of other nuances within Steph shot that makes him so interesting the slight tilt in his stance the way he rotates his body as he shoots that slight thumb flick at the end and if you want to get a deeper analysis there are many videos out there that take the science between Steph's game to an extreme but each of these things are really just variations on that class classic soy smooth one motion jumper that so few players in the world have truly perfected to give you some perspective on this the only players I can think of who have a release as quick as steps is Trey young and maybe Lillard Harden and Darius Garland meanwhile the list of NBA players who shoot like this is pretty extensive you see shooting one motion is not hard go to any local LA Fitness and there's a ton of people who will pull up to the NBA line and drain a three but doing it against 6' 10 behemoths while being double teamed and running off two screens and no oxygen well that's what makes Steph Curry anyways that's all I got for today I hope you enjoy and thanks for [Music] watching