FanPost

Andre Drummond's free throw woes: Ending Hack-A-Dre... with Hypnosis

Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports

Why The Pistons Should Hire Me

Quick question: How much do you think the Pistons would pay to turn Andre Drummond into even a 55-60% FT shooter? I'm guessing they'd pay quite a lot.

The reason I mention this is that I happen to be a hypnotherapist. Hypnosis has been used by what they call "Mental Coaches" to help athletes sharpen their games for decades. I was actually making a lengthy fanpost about why the Pistons should hire me, just days before the end of the JSE, largely to help improve players' focus and attitude, but also to help Andre with his FT shooting.

Magically, their focus and attitude improved when they released a single player from the roster. But the FT problem remains.

Now, I must confess that I don't know if the Pistons have already employed a mental coach, hypnotist or anyone else to help Drummond with his FT shooting. However, I'd have to guess the answer is no for two reasons:

  1. Dre's FT shooting hasn't improved
  2. Hypnosis and Mental Coaches are not yet mainstream

The list of athletes who've used hypnosis to improve performance includes Tiger Woods, Troy Aikman, George Brett, Rod Carew and former Detroit Tiger Damion Easley. The list also includes many olympic athletes and even entire teams who've hired hypnotists like myself to work with their players.

A study conducted at Detroit's own Wayne State University in the 1960's demonstrated that visualization alone can improve free throw shooting (i.e. motor skills).

The basic strategy is to use the state of hypnosis to help the athletes first visualize success - Andre would imagine making free throw after free throw, going through the same motion time after time, all while remaining calm, relaxed and focused - which then helps them to actually execute the program successfully during the game.

It takes a skilled therapist/mental coach to do this properly, but it isn't all that complicated. The best part is that there is absolutely no downside to giving it a shot. There's no chance his FT shooting will get worse, and it's really only a question of how much it improves. Every athlete on the planet performs better when calm, relaxed and focused. It's commonly referred to as being "cool under pressure."

I once worked with a 16-year-old golfer with confidence/attitude issues. A couple months later, his dad mailed me a newspaper clipping of his son breaking a local course record. Wish I had kept it.

I'm currently working with a very talented local high school basketball player (PG/SG) in Atlanta who was dealing with confidence issues. His dad emailed me last week and said that there's a "noticeable improvement on his confidence" after just two sessions. I could work with Andre several times a week.

For the Pistons, this should be a no-brainer. Here's a franchise cornerstone who they'll soon have to pay max money to retain, and they could improve his FT shooting by paying someone like me little more than they'd spend fueling up Roundball One.

Improving Andre's FT shooting makes him even more frightening. No longer would teams be able to just grab or hack him near the basket without repercussion. He wouldn't have to rush his shots in order to avoid getting fouled. Add 3-4 ppg to Dre's stat sheet and you're looking at a 17/13 player RIGHT NOW, and who-knows-what a few years from now.

A game like today's could've swung the Pistons' way without Hack-a-Dre being employed... and they don't even have their Dreamy Slasher/Scorer SF yet.

So let's start a petition to have SVG "just hire a f#cking Mental Coach" who not only has about 10,000 hours of experience in his profession, has appeared on CNN, Nancy Grace, nationally-syndicated radio and Fitness Magazine (and got results every single time)... but who also happens to be a basketball junkie (who can actually shoot FT's at a decent clip) and lifelong Pistons fan.

Can you guess who that might be?

This CNN piece featuring yours truly aired locally in Detroit just last week. My dad said he saw it on the local ABC affiliate.

Make it happen, DBB. (Of course, they'd make me sign an NDA, so I'd never be able to tell anyone about it... but you'd just know why Hypnowheel suddenly went dark.)

After that, you can start counting the days until 7 Championship Drive.

And won't that make for an amazing mixtape :)

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