14 March 2012

Amazing trick shot!

While working out at the gym this morning I saw an amazing trick shot on ESPN.  During an Iowa practice, a player wearing number 20, who ESPN tells me is Andrew Brommer (if I have the wrong player, please let me know!), hit a near-full-court backwards shot.  Click here for a YouTube video of the shot.  Once I saw the shot, I had to model it!


By my estimate, the shot went just over 77 feet (nearly 24 m) and took about 2.8 s to get from his hand to the basket.  The trajectory of the shot is shown in the image below (click on the image for a larger view of the graph).




Note that the red dot on the graph represents the basket location.  Note also that the date I use is the upload date for the video (if you know the date of the shot, please let me know!).  The basketball left Brommer's hand at about 44.5 mph (19.9 m/s) at 52° above the horizontal.  The ball reached a maximum height of 38.7 feet (11.8 m) above the court.  Upon entering the basket, the ball's speed was about 29.2 mph (13.0 m/s).



Luckily, someone filmed the shot.  There are lots of fake athletic feats online, many of them are impossible trajectories.  Given that I saw the shot on ESPN this morning, I take the shot to be real.  Certainly a once-in-a-lifetime shot!

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