Inside the transformation of Blake Griffin’s jump shot

It​ wasn’t from​ Jason​​ Kidd, who famously went by “Ason Kidd” because he had no J until the all-time-great point guard was introduced to Thate, a well-respected shooting coach. Or Mike Miller. Or Lakers head coach Luke Walton. This time, it was the big man who quite possibly had a further starting point than the rest. Someone who, at one time, owned prime real estate in the paint, but was the most tireless worker Thate encountered during his time as an NBA shot doctor.

“(Blake Griffin) sent me a stat that showed he led all big men in the NBA in field-goal percentage from 16 to 24 feet,” Thate told The Athletic. “I told him he’d be the best big-man shooter in the NBA one day.”

Yes, that Blake Griffin, the car-jumping, bully-ball, rim-gripping, bona fide superstar who made a mark on the league for six seasons while rarely leaving the confines of his on-court home. Today, though, you can also add 3-point shooter to that list of descriptors.

The six-time All-Star is on the verge of leading the Pistons to just their second playoff appearance this decade, and he’s doing so while on pace to lead them in 3-pointers made this season. The Bucks’ Brook Lopez and the Bulls’ Lauri Markkanen are the only true big men — I’m not classifying Nikola Mirotic as a true big man — with better 3-point shooting percentages than Griffin (35.7 percent) among players who attempt at least six per game. Furthermore, only 14 players — regardless of position — have made more 3s than Griffin this year.

On paper, the evolution of Griffin’s game began during the 2016-17 season, when he attempted 113 3s in 61 games, which was only 42 fewer than his previous six seasons combined. In reality, it’s a process that began four years earlier, in gyms across Los Angeles, with Thate connected at his hip. In 2011-12, Griffin shot just 52.1 percent from the free-throw line, attempted only 0.2 3s per game and would rarely test his luck anywhere other than near the rim. That’s when Thate — who averaged 43 points in Europe and had already earned league-wide respect for his work with Kidd, Miller and Walton — got the call from the Clippers to come work his magic on Griffin.

“First thing I did was make sure he wants to do this, that he’s willing to buy in and do it,” said Thate, who regularly worked with Griffin for four years and estimates he shot more than 350,000 jump shots in their time together. “That’s what I told him when we started: ‘All I ask of you is to do what I ask, and nothing more.'”

Thate proceeded to strip Griffin’s jump shot down into the gutter. Everything Griffin thought he knew about shooting — other than the placement of his hands on the basketball, which Thate said was fine — he was asked to forget. After inspecting and dissecting Griffin’s shooting form, Thate crafted a checklist of, approximately, 20 things that needed to be corrected. Griffin was picked apart from his toes up to his release point, as if he were part of the board game Operation.

“He said he felt like, you know, like he didn’t know how to shoot,” Thate said. “He did, but it was different than the way I was teaching it. I break it down into really minute details. I don’t like to leave anything to the imagination. If a guy has the time, it’s going to work, for sure. But if you don’t work, it’s going to go away because you have to do it all the time.”

The Griffin we see today has a crisp, linear shooting motion. It looks like he’s taking jump shots in a phone booth. That, however, wasn’t always the case. On that to-do list, as Thate recalls, was a decision to make Griffin more compact. As Thate tells it, Griffin would tend to jump backward and to the left while shooting his shot, rather than landing in the same spot from which he sprung. Picture Clark Kent bursting through the 3-by-3 glass box instead of stepping out and then saving the world.

Thate offered up a simple solution.

“I put tape on the ground, a backwards L, and he had his left foot on it, and he had to stay in that area, come down in that area,” Thate said. “And when he jumped up, when he got up in the air, he had to put his butt out away from the basket, like someone was going to punch him in the stomach. He wanted me to tell him, ‘Get your chest forward, make it go forward.’ I did that for a year and then told him to get his butt out. When you stick your butt out, like someone is punching you in the stomach, you’re like a V …  if you drew a straight line from his shoulder to his hips to his ankles, one of his hips would be a little further back. That would help him be more on balance, where he wasn’t leaning back.”

Part of the reason Griffin tended to lean left is because his toes and starting shooting motion favored that way. Thate said Griffin’s toes would point to the left side of the basket. His body, too. And then when Griffin began his shot, his motion would come across his body from left to right. In addition, by the time Griffin was ready to release, he’d hold the ball until he was coming back down. That’s a no-no for most successful shooters, and Thate said it was something he personally struggled with for a few years early in his playing career.

In an attempt to remedy these defects, Thate would have Griffin go through what were, essentially, stations. Each spot he directed Griffin to shoot from came with a specific fundamental attached. At one spot, he’d work solely on his balance. At another, his release point. So on and so on. Some stations didn’t even require a basketball.

Thate said they were never counting made shots. Instead, Griffin had to go through the mechanically correct motion a certain number of times — again, misses or makes didn’t count — to move on to the next spot.

“If he had to do 15 shots working on the right release at his forehead, he might take 20 shots before he’d do good. He might make eight of them,” Thate said. “But he might have missed three or four in a row but all were mechanically correct and what I was looking for.”

In regards to release point, this is what the conversations might have gone like:

“If you put a piece of wood on top of your head, and then nail a piece of wood on top of your forehead, that 90-degree angle right there in front of your head is where the ball needs to be,” Thate described via telephone.

As you might have already gathered, Thate isn’t one to pat you on the back for putting the ball through the nylon a few times. That’s not what separates a good shooter from a bad one, not in a closed gym, at least. The mechanics, the technical aspect of what makes a shooter consistent, dominated their relationship.

“When I start working with a guy, I give him a bag of M&M peanuts and tell him, ‘It’s mechanics, not makes,'” Thate said. “We’d shoot 10 a spot around the key, from one baseline to the other. It was always, ‘Is this a mechanically correct shot?’

“He’d start with a checklist, like a car. He had to stand up, chin was down, toes were straight, elbow was in front of his right hip, and that was the way it would start every time.”

Thate said Griffin would rarely shoots 3s under his watch. That doesn’t mean the mechanics didn’t translate. Instilling the proper fundamentals is the key in growing a great shooter. Griffin would regularly work inside the arc, but the shooting spot would get pushed back a foot or two throughout the routine. If he started 10 feet away from the basket in one selected location, he’d likely end up just short of the 3-point line minutes later.

This philosophy was part of Thate’s “brick-by-brick” theory, which was implemented to keep everything in perspective.

“If you can shoot it from 17 feet, 18 feet, get the mechanics down from there, and then go to the 3-point line, the mechanics are still there, you just might have to tell him not to jump over the line, land in the same spot,” Thate said. “He’d gradually work his way out so it didn’t feel like such a gradual jump. Visually it’s like, ‘Whoa,’ but when you do it gradually, you work on the mechanics and then you don’t realize the distance.

“You have to perfect it at a distance where it’s not uncomfortable. Blake and I didn’t do anything off of the move probably for a year or 1.5 years. It was all standstill spots.”

Thate and Griffin haven’t worked together in about two years, but he still keeps close tabs on him. When Thate watches Griffin now, he sees a much more self-assured shooter than the 23-year-old ball of clay he got his hands on some years ago.

“We’d work in front of the rim, 10 feet in front of the basket to the free-throw line, and when we first started he couldn’t hit the rim with the new mechanics because they were so foreign to him,” Thate said. “The ball would just slip out of his hand, and I’d tell him not to worry about it.

“He would get frustrated, and I later understood that. Jason Kidd showed no emotions whatsoever. Luke and Mike were mellow. Blake was 23 and wanted to be greater yesterday.”

There’s a flair to the way Griffin now lets the 3-ball fly. Along with James Harden and Luka Doncic, the 30-year-old Griffin is among the league leaders in step-back 3s. The inclusion of a reliable jump shot has Griffin playing the best basketball of his career. It would be a crime if he doesn’t earn his fifth All-NBA honor this season.

Griffin’s transformation as a shooter is equally — if not more — staggering as Kidd’s progression was. Potentially, it has added another five years to his career. And when Thate watched the Pistons, he’s not one bit surprised by what he’s witnessing.

“He did everything I ever asked of him,” he said. “I think it’s great that he’s enjoying the success that he’s had this year. No one ever worked harder or put more shots up than him in all the years I’ve done it.

“He’s confident, he’s got good mechanics, and he believes in his shot. I’ve seen him miss three or four, but he doesn’t think about not taking the next one. He trusts himself. He’s made himself one of the best shooters in the NBA, in my mind, as far as big people. And knowing him, he’ll keep working.”