EP 114: The Secret to Scoring More Points

🎙️ The Hours

Author

Tyler Coston
April 28, 2026

Hey Coach,

You've been there. Your best player jacks up a contested fadeaway with 18 seconds on the shot clock. You're already halfway out of your seat. What are you doing?

Then it goes in. And you start clapping.

That moment, right there, just told your entire team what's acceptable. Culture is caught, not taught, and shot selection is the loudest thing your players are watching. This week, Mark and I break down the one tool I can't teach basketball without: the SAVI Shot Scale.

Key Takeaways

  • Shot selection is your culture. Every clap, every groan, every "good shot" you yell from the bench is teaching your team what's allowed. If your star takes a bad shot and it goes in and you celebrate, you just gave the green light to everyone on your roster. A shot is good or bad when it leaves the hand, not when the ball goes through.

  • A scale of 1 to 10 with no 10s. The SAVI Shot Scale grades every shot from 3 to 9. There are no 10s because there is no perfect shot. We've all missed wide-open layups. Removing the 10 forces your players to evaluate the shot, not the result.

  • Stop treating all layups the same. There's roughly a 35% effective field goal percentage difference between an open layup and a contested one. Open layups at the rim are nines. Contested layups are fives. If you keep treating them the same, you'll keep losing games you should win.

  • Hunt nines first, sevens second. Nines are wide-open layups. Sevens are wide-open catch-and-shoot threes from a green-light shooter. Everything else is what happens when those two break down. Teams in our Off-Season Challenge who hunt nines and sevens are scoring 1.2 to 1.6 points per shot. Teams hunting fives are scoring 0.4.

  • Apply it across the board first, then add nuance. Don't get lost in "Is this a seven for Mark but a five for Tyler?" on day one. A seven is a seven is a seven. Natural consequence handles the rest. Your better shooters will get more sevens because your players already know who to pass to. Refine the edges later.

Stay SAVI,

-Tyler

P.S. This month inside the SAVI Basketball community, we are going all in on the Off-Season Challenge! If you're not in the membership yet, now is a great time to jump in; the first 7 days are on us. Join SAVI Basketball Here!

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