As the basketball player steps to the free throw line, the crowd watches in silent anticipation. With one sweeping motion, he bounces the ball off the backboard and through the net.
Wait, did he put it in a bank? On purpose?
The fans erupt in celebration. The shot is no fluke — just another free throw, South Korean style.
The free throw is supposed to be an easy spot after a foul: a direct, unguarded shot 15 feet off the backboard. But there is an art to it. The ball, most players and fans would say, should leave the fingers gracefully, make a wide arc, avoid the rim – and “splash” straight into the net, as NBA sharpshooter Steph called it. Curry.
With the help of analysis, other shots have evolved in professional basketball. But not the free throw, and over the past 30 years, his NBA shooting percentage has barely budged from 77.
The plan’s stagnation stems from the mockery that awaits any variation of the “nothing but net” technique in the United States. Table shots – which bounce the ball off the glass before it falls through the net – are considered amateur for anything other than layups.
But a dedicated group of players in the Korean Basketball League, or KBL, have embraced the unorthodox technique.
“When the camera goes into the crowd, nobody’s laughing, nobody’s laughing at a player who was using the backboard,” said Eric Fawcett, a Canada-based basketball analyst who consults for a US college team. He said he had recently observed the trend of odd free kicks when looking at match footage. “There’s just a definite round of applause from the home crowd.”
And research shows that the bank shot has clear advantages.
Technique has been a staple among South Korean basketball players for years. Experts say about half of the top 10 free throw shooters make their free throws regularly. Players who have banked it exclusively have pushed their free throw percentages into the 80s and 90s.
Curious to learn more about this phenomenon, Fawcett dug into the statistics and history of the technique. Sure, plenty of players shot over 80 percent during their careers using the board on nearly every free throw.
Some, he said, even improved dramatically after switching to the bank shot, like Yoongi Ha, who jumped to 80 percent from 57.
How did this unorthodox style become so popular in South Korea? Experts point to a few pioneering players in the 1980s and 90s.
“Legends like Kim Hyun-joon and Moon Kyung-eun popularized the bank shot for the first time,” said Won Seok-Yeun, a South Korean reporter who covers KBL Since then, the bank shot has been recognized by a growing number of amateurs and professionals nationwide as a valid way to improve free throw averages. “A lot of today’s shot putters are heavily influenced by them.”
Even some American players who didn’t make it to the NBA and went to the KBL, like Rod Benson and Dewan Hernandez, learned the shot while playing in South Korea and dramatically increased their free throw percentage, Won added.
Jeon Seong-hyen, a guard with the Goyang Sono Skygunners, is a top shooter in the KBL and can make his free throws. Since high school, Jeon said, he has idolized Moon for his bank shots. Despite resistance from coaches over the years, he has stuck with the technique.
Jeon calls the technique “his signature.” Now, he said, he never shoots free throws without hitting the backboard — and he makes nearly 90 percent of them.
“Psychologically, shooting the bank is easier than shooting clean because I can see where I need to aim,” he said. He can focus on the rectangle on the board instead of relying on muscle memory.
Efficiency is what counts most on the field, Jeon added — not style points.
“The shooter can choose a shot over a straight shot with up to a 20 percent advantage,” according to a study by Lawrence Silverberg, an engineering professor at North Carolina State University, and colleagues, who used computer simulations to compare bank shots and direct shots.
By bouncing the basketball off the backboard first, a shot blocks much of the ball’s momentum, allowing it to fall into the net with a smoother, more controlled trajectory, Silverberg said. He found that this absorption effect greatly reduces the margin of error.
A small improvement like that can make or break a game, Silverberg added. Shots from the free throw line often account for about 20 percent of a team’s total score. And “the games are generally very close.”
But even with these advantages, the bank shot hasn’t caught on beyond South Korea. Experts point to the sport’s deep-rooted culture that prizes the perfect high-bow run. The “nothing but net” shot has become established as the perfect shot in basketball culture, aesthetically and technically.
“When you shoot a nice swish, that net dances a little bit,” Silverberg said, “and you hear that sound.” He added: “It’s beautiful.”
Coaches also tend to stick to traditional techniques. Very few take the time to break old habits and teach the bank to shoot from scratch. Silverberg added that most basketball players start by trying straight shots because they don’t have enough arm strength to bounce the ball off the backboard.
“This is really a unique thing happening in South Korea,” he said. “You don’t see that kind of change in sports that often.”
It’s not the only underrated shooting technique in basketball. Another unorthodox method, the overhand free throw, was made famous half a century ago by NBA Hall of Famer Rick Barry.
But neither the bank’s latency nor its technique seem ready to gain widespread traction.
Despite its higher success rate, Jeon said, the bank’s plan is not easy to master. Each board has a unique elasticity, so players must adapt their technique to each new court, he explained.
And Jeon is fine with the bank shot remaining unconventional.
“I don’t really want other people to follow,” he said. “I want to be the only one who does.”