If you’re a home basketball player, one of the things that you never really know is “Am I getting better?” or “How many shots have I taken?”. When I was a kid, I would shoot around a bunch but never really have the metrics to show I was getting any better unfortunately, all I could go by was ‘feel’. Enter Shottracker, the electronic device that tracks all of your shooting.
I’ve now had the device for almost two years now. Initially what compelled me to buy it was that they had a 3000 shot competition in November before basketball season. I thought if my son saw that, he might get interested. To say that it lit a fire under him was an understatement, he shot 1300 shots the first day of the competition to be in first place in the nation. Unfortunately the next day somebody got to 3000 ahead of him, but it was still amazing to see how much it drove him to shoot more.
So how does it work? Basically, you attached one device to your net and one to your wrist. Basically the wrist sensor tells the phone app that you shot and the net sensor tells the phone app that you made it. Pretty simple concept overall but highly effective. Unfortunately it doesn’t track where on the court you shot it, that’s the feature that would take it to the next level. You can kind of tell where you shot it by using the included drills in the app which tell you where to shoot and for how many shots, but that’s about as good as you can get. If you’re just shooting around randomly (like most people do) the sensor won’t know if you went 90 for 100 on layups or three pointers, it’s all the same to it.
The only issue I’ve had with the setup is with the net sensor. The first net sensor I had eventually died from a bad battery (probably all the shots my son was taking). The next one worked well but eventually the top came off (I just glued it back on). Shottracker support was excellent, they replaced the first one free of charge (I didn’t contact them about the second).
The best part of the whole thing is definitely the competitions they run. If you can get your son or daughter involved with those, it can really motivate them to do better. You’d be amazed what shooting two or three thousand shots can do, your son or daughter will move to another level very quickly. Some of the camps they run are show in the app picture below:
In conclusion, would I recommend it? If it will get your son or daughter to shoot more shots, I would 100% buy it. Kids love technology and this can take them to another level if used properly. I just wish they’d add the location feature, that’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for. They’re developing that into the team based one they’re making but unfortunately that doesn’t do me much good at home. Hopefully someday someone comes out with location based shot tracking.
