Shooting Your Shot When shooting, there are three different ways for the ball to leave your hand. Both the Head Pause and the Catapult consist of three motions that are taken to release the ball. The One Motion is very straight forward and as you can see from the image below follows a simple path to release. It is imperative that after each shot, your hand flicks down once the ball leaves your hand. This movement is called the follow through and signifies the end of the motion of a shot, as well as placing a gentle spin on the ball so it glides effortlessly through the air. The spin on the ball follows Newton's Third Law and allows the basketball to spin off the backboard at different angles so that it go through the net. You also must consider the angle at which you release the ball, if you release it too soon, your arc would end short of the hoop, missing the rim entirely. Too late, and you're in danger of "bricking" it and you might want to duck cause the ball is likely to come back to you. The optimum angle of release is somewhere around 50 degrees.