SOSA - Sports Ophthalmology Society of the Americas

You often hear people talk about certain basketball players having great vision. Most of the time this refers to a player who has a knack for finding the open man on offense. Does sight play a bigger role than we think? Are there ways to use our knowledge of sight to improve basketball players’ performance? The answer is yes. Using the knowledge of how our visual system works to improve performance is not a new concept. As children athletes are taught how to proper form of a shot. When shooting with perfect form your arms should create a window so both eyes can see the target. The reason for the use of both eyes is to take advantage of stereopsis and depth perception. You eyes are at different horizontal planes so there is some disparity in the images that they see. This gives you a three dimensional image. So stereopsis and depth perception allow you to judge the distance and height of the rim. When shooting, your brain is processing information from your eyes to help you put the right amount of muscle tension to make a certain shot.

Why do you make open shots at a greater percentage than contested shots? One factor is your vision. When you have an“open look” you are able to use stereopsis and depth perception. One reason that Shaq is a poor free throw shooter is his form blocks one of his eyes. He has made himself a one-eyed shooter eliminating the advantage that you get with steropsis and depth perception. We all have a dominant eye. Your shooting percentage will be greater when using the dominant eye. So what if you are right eyed dominant (which most people are) and your defender is left handed (which most people are not)? When the player goes to shoot and the defender raises his hand, he essentially has blinded the shooter by making him use his non dominant eye. So we should be teaching players to raise their left hand defensively. How can we help the offensive players?

Legend has it that one of Pete Maravich’s shooting exercises was to practice shooting with one eye covered, alternating the covered eye. The theory being when you are shooting with a defender on you they are raising a hand in your face covering one of your eyes. You can train your brain to be a better one-eyed shooter by practicing. The term that explains why we have still depth perception when only using one eye is monocular (one-eyed) clues to help with depth perception. Monocular clues include object overlap, relative object size, highlights, shadows and motion. So Pete used his drill to train his brain to be a better shooter with a defender on him.

by Dr. Rolando Toyos