Stephen Curry Shooting Form: How To Shoot Like Steph Curry - Splash Lab Basketball (2024)

If you've ever wanted to know how to shoot like Steph Curry, you're about to find out. In this post, we did an in depthanalysis of Steph Curry’s shooting form...

This isn’t necessarily what you must do, but our goal is just to show you exactly what one of the best shooters in the world does when he shoots...

And most importantly towards the end of this post, we'll discuss how you can develop shooting mechanics that can make you just as consistent, accurate, and deadly on the court.

(Hint: it's not from trying to copy your favorite player's form...)

Steph Curry keeps his shooting shoulder, elbow and hip aligned.

You can see that his shoulder is directly behind his elbow, in line with his hip.

His forearm is slightly tilted away from this line, keeping the ball above his shooting eye.

Curry is a right handed shooter, so in order to align his right side, he turns his feet slightly towards the left.

Sometimes, off the dribble, curry’s feet point directly at the rim.

When this happens, he rotates his hips as he jumps, and turns in the air to maintain that alignment.

Off the catch, Steph Curry dips the basketball and uses the momentum to create rhythm for his shot.

This means that after catching the ball, he brings it down to his waist before rising up to shoot.

Off the dribble, most of the time he is already low and the ball is already at his waist, so he doesn't need to dip.

Steph uses a relatively relaxed hand position on the ball, with his index finger and thumb making a V-shape.

Also notice that his hand is on the side of the ball, and rotates towards the net as he extends his arm.

When Curry shoots, the ball first travels backwards towards his head, before traveling forwards towards the net.

The point right before the ball starts moving towards the net is called the setpoint.

Steph Curry’s setpoint is just above his right eye.

At his setpoint, his thumb is in line with his eyebrow and his palm is facing to the side.

You will also notice that his arm makes a 90 degree angle at his armpit.

The angle between his arm and his forearm is much less than 90 degrees.

He always reaches his setpoint before his feet leave the ground, and then uses the power from his jump to push the ball forward.

Curry is a palm shooter.

This means that he rests the ball on his entire hand with the weight of the ball on his palm.

He then transfers the ball from this palm to his finger pads and off his fingertips as he snaps his wrist forward.

He uses a 4 fingers down release, and the ball comes off of his middle finger last.

Curry keeps his wrist relaxed and floppy on his release.

On his follow through, his elbow is right above his head and his arm is completely straight.

The ball travels in a straight line.

It starts off above his eye and on his follow through, his wrist ends up directly above his eye.

Steph keeps his eyes on the rim until the ball is released.

As soon as it leaves his hand, he follows the ball with his eyes all the way to the rim .

Notice that his off hand comes off the ball right before he starts to snap his wrist forward.

Also watch how he tucks his thumb in next to his index finger on his off hand.

Almost every player I coach wants to get a shooting form that looks like their favorite player's form...

You've probably tried to do this too. I know I did when I was obsessing over how to improve my shooting.

So you try to copy every single aspect by watching these breakdowns.But what happens?

You end up hurting your form more than helping it...Why? Because every player is different.

Every player has a different body type, different height, age, strength, shape, and even hand size. All of these things matter...

So when you're trying to shoot like Steph or Kobe, you're copying shooting principles that work for THEIR unique physical characteristics, not yours.

Now of course, if your shot is horrible, like you shoot with a set point over your head, then of course your form and shot will improve if you try to copy a pro player. But other than that, if you want to truly reach your MAX shooting potential...

Then you need to develop a set of mechanics that are UNIQUELY customized for YOUR body and YOUR characteristics. The way to do that is to learn the correct shooting principlesand mould those around your unique characteristics like your strength, age, style of play, etc.

The worst part if you don't train for your own unique style of shooting like that, you can never find a form that 'sticks'. Which can get super frustrating because you never get that 'reliable shooter' status. Your consistency suffers. Your in-game shots are never as good as your practice. Teammates stop relying on you to take shots and no form ever starts to feel like "your own"... And now you know why.

Once you install those correct shooting principlesinto your own form by going through this training program, you'll develop a beautiful, consistent, smooth shot that's unstoppable on the court.

Coach Faizal