Noah's Arc: In search of Jeremy Sochan's jump shot
The Spurs have all hands on deck to help their rookie improve his shooting, from coach Brett Brown, to motion sensors, to a voice in the sky.
Jeremy Sochan was putting up shots on the far side of the court at the Spurs’ practice facility on Tuesday, listening to instruction from Brett Brown and commentary from other members of the staff surrounding him. But Brown’s voice wasn’t the most prominent on the floor, and neither were those from the gallery.
After every attempt — whether from the 3-point line or the free-throw stripe — a number was called out over a loudspeaker in the corner of the gym, each time invoking a different type of reaction from Sochan and the coaches around him. But there was nobody on a mic, just a disembodied voice.
“Thirty-nine,” it chirped. “Forty-one. Forty-four. Thirty-eight. Thirty-seven. Forty-two.”
What seemed at first like an indecipherable scoring sequence for some type of random shooting game was actually immediate feedback from a tracking system that captured the trajectory of every shot Sochan took, with each number representing the angle at which the ball approached the basket. And that was just one of the measurements being taken with every attempt he let fly.
The Spurs are one of now 26 NBA teams that utilize the Noah Basketball shooting system — a sensor placed 13 feet above the rim that tracks the position of a ball 30 times per second during its flight path. They’ve had it in place for several years as a tool to help players calibrate their shots by logging and analyzing three different pieces of information: the ball’s entry angle at the basket, the depth of the shot, and the left-to-right coordinates — from minus-9 to 9 inches, with the center of the hoop being zero (the diameter of the cylinder is 18 inches).
Per the Noah Basketball website, the ideal entry angle at the rim is 45 degrees, with a depth of 11 inches past the point of the rim closest to the shooter. But Sochan — whose shot often comes out flat — said his goal for now is to consistently hit at least the 42-degree mark every time he shoots. Make or miss. Anything to build upon his brutal 15.4-percent shooting from beyond the 3-point line.
“There are a lot of ups and downs. I feel like someone’s testing me, whether it’s the basketball gods or someone else,” he said about his shooting troubles this season. “But I’m just going to keep with it, keep confident. I believe in it, they believe in it, so I’m just gonna keep going.”
The name “Noah” was cleverly adopted from the Bible’s story of Noah's Ark, because “the company's original focus was on the arc of the shot … and Noah built the perfect arc (sic).” For Sochan, it’s about finding the ideal shot trajectory and building the muscle memory necessary to be consistent. It’s going to take time, but the Noah makes it easy for players to pick up right where they left off, whether that’s from a current or previous session.
Beyond just tracking the shot itself, the technology logs each attempt from any location on the floor for as long as a player or team decides to use it. It’s essentially always active, there is no computer chip or special ball, and if you’ve taken a shot in that practice facility in recent years, it’s probably on file somewhere.
The image below illustrates exactly what a player sees on the display when they pull up their profile. The Noah tracks the average arc, depth and horizontal movement of their shots from everywhere on the floor, pinpoints the exact landing spots anywhere near the cylinder, and keeps a running log of every attempt no matter the date and time.
Noah Basketball claims it has tracked more than 400 million shots to date across different levels of basketball, from high school to the pros. Sochan’s shot contribution might represent a miniscule percentage of that number, but it’s one of the only pieces of that pie that matters to the Spurs right now.
San Antonio’s first-round pick said he’d never had a true shooting coach at any previous level growing up, and that the shot he has today is just what came naturally to him as a kid. While it’s always risky to completely rework a player’s form, Sochan said he trusts the people (and the technology) around him to be a beacon of guidance, whatever that entails.
“Of course (shooting form) is going to be personal and unique, but … there are a ton of coaches who’ve been there for a long time, and they’ve seen all different types of shots, so I’m also gonna listen to them and work on my shot,” he said. “And I know there are gonna be things I have to do to make it better, and it’s gonna help me stay consistent. So I’m gonna stay with it.”
And Sochan doesn’t have to look far for recent Spurs success stories. Players like Keldon Johnson and Tre Jones have both utilized the Noah system as part of their efforts to become more consistent shooters, and (unsurprisingly) Johnson in particular has been a one-man support group for the rookie.
“We talk about it a lot, and (Johnson) always jokes around saying he really sees a young him in me, because he went through the same thing,” Sochan said. “So I do pick his brain and ask questions, and he helps me a lot. It’s good for me to have someone like that.”
But unlike Sochan, Johnson had TOO much arc on his shot early in his career. Jones, on the other hand, had similarly struggled to get the ball over the front of the rim with consistency. But now he’s shooting 38 percent from the 3-point line on 2.2 attempts per game, one season removed from connecting on just 19 percent of his shots from deep at a low volume.
“(The Noah) is something I’ve been able to use over the last couple of years, and seeing changes in the arc of my shot, being able to see what types of misses I’ve had, front rim or back rim — obviously the front rims are tougher to make,” Jones said. “I’ve definitely seen some changes throughout the last couple of years. It’s been a short amount of time but there have been a lot of changes already.”
A voice in the sky can only offer so much in terms of divine intervention, but the Noah system is providing digestible data points and visualizations with which Sochan can work. What he and his coaches do with that information will depend on the human element of the equation, and whether or not they decide to significantly alter his shooting form rather than simply tweak it is certainly a conversation they’re having.
Still, in their search for consistency, the instant technological feedback paired with constant repetition should go a long way in developing the area of Sochan’s game that is most lacking — the one that, if unlocked, could propel him to a different level entirely.
“Someone’s testing me,” Sochan said again with a grin. “But we’re gonna get there for sure.”
Impressive tech. I’m still wondering how someone like Tre Jones - with all the coaching and weight lifting that’s available to them - regularly just grazes the rim on wide open threes. I know the NBA is very different from any basketball I’ve played over the years but at this point in a player’s career it has to be a mental thing, right?