Shotloc helps amateur and veteran ballers perfect their jumpshots.
by Adam Figman
When most parents notice their children struggling with a specific aspect of basketball—say, jumpshooting—they tend to dish out generic advice: “Keep practicing,” or something along those lines, will usually suffice. But not for Robert Ffrench, a proud father who wanted the best for his kin. He went as far as designing a brand new product to assist his daughter, Whitney, a Div. 1 (St. Joseph’s) NCAA hooper to-be, with her J.
The result was Shotloc, a device that positions the fingers evenly and forces the shooter to use his or her fingertips when practicing a jumpshot.
“The first thing that it does is it forces [players] to spread their hand, and really get a good spread on the ball,” Paul Mansfield, COO at Shotloc, told SLAM. “It gets the ball off the palm, and gets it on the fingerpads, so you get a nice spread. You’ve got no choice—because your fingers are locked in that space—of just following through consistently, with all four fingers in the same motion.” 
Multiple players will endorse the training tool, which is now officially licensed by the NBA, in the coming months. The first is JJ Redick, a true sharpshooter if there’s ever been one.
“It’s a teaching tool, a supplement,” Redick says. “I preach that you can’t get anything done without hard work, so obviously you have to get in the gym, and work, and do a lot of repetition. But it forces you to only shoot the ball with your fingertips. Some people shoot the ball with their palms—even guys who are still in the NBA, who aren’t very good shooters. It teaches that, and it teaches follow-through as well. So it really puts the ball in the right position.”
When SLAM spoke to Redick late last December, shortly after he tested out the product, the Magic guard had just broken out of a shooting funk that plagued him earlier in the season. Coincidence?
“I tried it out—I’m not gonna mess with something I don’t believe is actually beneficial, and I think it is beneficial,” Redick says. “I used it for a whole day, right before I got on the little hot streak I’ve been on, shooting the ball. I don’t want to say it was because of that, but it didn’t hurt.”
Ball don’t lie.
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