Garrett taking his shot

Take a casual glance at the above photo and you might be thinking that Hawaii shooting guard Brian Garrett is aiming for the stanchion just out of the picture frame, to the right. After all, look at the angle of his arms in relation to his body.

Well, you’d be incorrect. Garrett, a junior out of Cañada College (Calif.), was pulling up from the elbow for a 14-footer. It’s an unconventional release, arms skewed to the right of his body and with a very high release point.

“Yeah, I just shoot it,” Garrett said when asked about his unusual, lefty jumper. “I don’t really think too much about it. I’ve been trying to pay attention to my feet and the way I land and all that stuff. It’s just, shooting’s a lot mental. Honestly you just get it, and let it go. You think that it’s in, and half the time it isn’t.”

Garrett has tweaked his release since his arrival at UH, but it’s been entirely to do with his footwork and back form and not his arms and wrist.

You can tell he’s been asked about it more than a few times.

“Man, you think my stroke’s unorthodox now, when I was coming up in high school (St. Francis in Mountain View, Calif.) my first couple of years, it was kind of from the hip, up and over,” Garrett said, motioning a form similar to that of NBA veteran Kevin Martin. “I sort of just worked with a guy, and just found something that was comfortable for me and just stuck with it. And coming out here has really helped a lot, because they’ve helped me focus on landing on two feet. Not arching my back. All these little nuances in my shot that’s made me a lot more consistent.”

The 6-foot-4 guard said he gradually made his point of release higher so as to make it more difficult for close-out defenders to block when he spots up.

Hey, whatever works, right? Going purely by the eye test, Garrett has been one of UH’s best practice shooters coming up on two weeks since the first full day. As a shoot-first player, he stands to benefit from the Rainbow Warriors’ four-out, drive-and-kick system. But he acknowledged he’s got plenty of details to pick up.

Garrett walked on here after scoring 14.9 ppg at Cañada, earning all-league honors and an all-state honorable mention. He’s competing for minutes at the 2 or 3 with Leland Green, Larry Lewis Jr. and Noah Allen.

“It’s competitive,” Garrett said. “We got a lot of guys who can really play, between me, Lee, Larry, Noah. It’s just a lot of good players, guys working hard. It’s fun.”

The NBA 2K series of video games is fairly in depth now in terms of being able to customize an avatar player’s shot. Garrett says he’s played it but hasn’t tried to recreate his release.

“But 2K’s pretty up to date,” he said. “They might have something for me.”