Why Most Players Never Develop Elite Shooting | NBA Shooting Coach Dave Love

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NBA shooting coach Dave Love has spent over 15 years working at the highest level of basketball, with the Phoenix Suns, Cleveland Cavaliers, Orlando Magic, Dallas Mavericks, and currently an Eastern Conference team. He's also one of the few practitioners at that level actively contributing to peer-reviewed research.

In this episode, Dave and Coach Jav dig into why the pursuit of a repeatable, perfect shot is the wrong goal entirely and what coaches should be focused on instead. They break down the sandbox analogy, the PoST framework, how to design practice that actually reflects the game, and how to meet athletes where they are when introducing evidence-based methods.

If you coach shooting at any level, this one is worth your time.

Topics covered:

• No two shots are the same — and why chasing a repeatable shot is the wrong goal
• The sandbox analogy — how Dave thinks about functional movement solutions and what it means to be in or out of the sandbox
• Positive and negative power — his framework for identifying what's actually causing a player to miss
• The PoST framework — how to periodize skill training the way you would strength or conditioning
• Practice design and the challenge point — using defenders with intention and building variability into every session
• Meeting athletes where they are — how to introduce ecological principles to players attached to traditional methods

Listeners of the podcast can receive 10% off the upcoming Sport Movement Skill Conference (June 5–6 in St. Paul, Minnesota) using the code Javi26 when registering.

Links:

• Dave's platform and newsletter
• Research paper: "Skill Adaptation in Basketball Coaching" International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 2025
• Sport Movement Skill Conference (use code JAVI26 for 10% off)
• Dave on X
• Dave on instagram
• Podcast website
• Emergence

Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io

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Twitter: @thecoachjav
IG: @thecoachjav