Daniel Farias, Staff Writer
Photo credits by: nba.com
Kyle Korver, a guard for the Atlanta Hawks basketball team, takes a shot.
Throughout the year, the Atlanta Hawks have steadily climebed to the highest rankings of the NBA. With a 43-11 record heading into the All-Star break, the Hawks now look to continue their winning patterns.
The Hawks lead the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference and many argue that the team’s success has been the NBA’s surprise of the year, considering how during the last two seasons, the team could not edge its way past the first round of the playoffs, with their runs ending in losses to the Indiana Pacers.
This year, however, the Hawks sent five players to the 2015 NBA All-Star Game, including Paul Millsap, Al Horford, Jeff Teague, Kyle Korver, and Dennis Schröder. With what now appears to be a list of solid ballplayers and a balanced team, the Hawks are finding a way to win.
One highlight for arguably the league’s best team has been Kyle Korver, whose successful three-point shooting has been a definitive boon for the Hawks. In a USA Today story on Korver, sports writer Jeff Zillgitt, revealed the secrets to his shooting success: Korver works for repetition, aiming to have the same technique every time he shoots.
“To be a great shooter, to be a consistent shooter, which is what constitutes a great shooter – the goal is to make your shot exactly the same every single time,” Korver said in an interview with Zillgitt.
Korver also claims to use his paddle-boarding experiences on the Pacific Ocean to find the art of shooting. Embarking on misogi, a Japanese method for achieving perfection, Korver mastered the stroke of paddling.
“I started breaking down every single little detail of this simple stroke and tried to make it perfect,” he said.
In addition to his pursuit of perfection, Korver also teamed up with P3 Peak Performance Project, a Santa Barbara sports science lab that helped Korver use his body to get the most out of his shot. The sharpshooter’s success is based on his 20-point checklist of things he must be doing in his shot to maintain his rhythm.
“I’m not going to check every single one of them every time. There’s a certain point, a certain feel I’m trying to get to every day,” Korver said.
Korver has amassed an average of 12.7 points per game this year, while his field goal and 3-point percentages, .512 and .523 respectively, are indicative of his talent.
Though Kyle Korver certainly has won the hearts of Hawks’ fans, it’s center Al Horford who continues to showcase a stellar season. Horford experienced a season-ending injury last year, just like he did in 2012. In order to recover, Horford didn’t go as hard as he may have in the past.
With both pectorals injured in two different years, Horford decided no longer to weight train. He turned to elastics and body weight exercises instead to rehabilitate. Now, Horford is putting up strong numbers, including a .54 field goal percentage with 15.6 points per game and 7.4 rebounds per game. Some claim that all it took was a revamping of Horford’s offseason regimen to make Hawks’ fans love him.
David Aldridge of NBA.com and TNT weighed in on the Hawks’ turnaround season. “They won 19 straight games. You know, just an incredible run by playing team basketball… And they do not miss when they shoot,” Aldridge said.
