Lethal Weapon

How Chris Matthews—aka Lethal Shooter—became the most in-demand shooting coach the NBA and the rest of basketball culture has ever seen.

Words ALEX BHATTACHARJI

Chris Matthews never expected to watch the highlight of his basketball career on television. It came on the NBA season’s opening night, a few days before last Christmas, when the Los Angeles Lakers’ players and coaches received their championship rings. Matthews, aka Lethal Shooter, had tutored more than half of the title-winning team on the method he calls the Art of Shooting. He coached forward Kyle Kuzma and guards Quinn Cook and Talen Horton-Tucker, and “I worked in the off-season with AD for a few weeks,” he says, referring to All-NBA power forward Anthony Davis. Matthews also instructed several now-former Lakers: guard Avery Bradley, who signed with the Miami Heat, and swingman Danny Green, who was later traded to the Philadelphia 76ers. The Sixers also signed center Dwight Howard, one of Matthews’ first students several years ago. Watching from his home in L.A., Matthews was excited for each of his students. “I was blessed to be able to help them achieve a goal,” says Matthews. “I come in here and there just to help those guys.”

But Matthews only became overcome with emotion when Kentavious CaldwellPope, the Lakers’ starting shooting guard, kissed his diamond-encrusted ring before placing it on his finger. Matthews calls this “the most satisfying moment I ever had.” He had started working with Caldwell-Pope the year before the Lakers’ championship season and helped lift him out of a slump. After strong shooting in the pandemic-shortened regular season, Caldwell-Pope excelled in the playoffs: Over the course of the title run, he made more 3-pointers than almost every Laker in history, save for Kobe Bryant in 2010. “And am I the person getting the ring? Am I the person that’s re-signing with the Lakers for money?” he says of CaldwellPope’s three-year, $39.1 million contract extension. “No. But to see him win in life is what it’s all about for me as a coach.”

In less than five years, Matthews has leveraged this commitment to become the NBA’s most in-demand shooting coach. Regardless of who wins the next title, Matthews will likely have more reason to celebrate. There is hardly a team in the league without a past or current client on their roster. But Matthews’ influence goes far beyond pro

Matthews played professionally abroad for seven seasons before finding his true calling as a coach.

Matthews worked with two-thirds of the Lakers team that won the 2020 NBA title.

players. Driven by his dazzling shooting exploits on social media, Matthews has attracted a massive following and has begun teaching his Art of Shooting—a creative skill he practices with a martialarts-like discipline—in the worlds of fashion, entertainment and celebrity.

It’s ironic for Matthews, who toiled in relative anonymity as a player, to find fame as a coach, but not unheard of. What will be unprecedented is being able to pick a coach—like one nicknamed Lethal Shooter—to play alongside all-time greats in an upcoming release of NBA 2K.

Matthews can’t pinpoint the exact moment he realized he was playing his last game, but by the time the ball touched the bottom of the basket for his 50th point, there was no doubt. Competing alongside and against an array of NBA aspirants and European pro-league vets, Matthews was ostensibly using the EBA (the Eastern Basketball Alliance) game in 2016 as a tune-up and showcase for international scouts. “I knew in my heart that I was never going to try to go back overseas again,” he says. Matthews, a 6-foot-4 shooting guard, had played internationally for seven years but was increasingly hampered by a series of injuries. That night, as he drained jumper after jumper, Matthews convinced himself he could not only perform at a high level but also leave on a high note. “I could walk away feeling good about myself,” he recalls thinking. “I won’t feel any regret.”

When the final buzzer sounded, Matthews had put up 60 points, a performance the announcer prophetically referred to as “putting on a clinic.” Soon after the game, Matthews’ friend Kevin Séraphin, a veteran NBA big man fighting to stay in the league, made a fateful suggestion: “Man, you need to show me how to shoot like that.” Matthews had heard comments like that since he was a playground prodigy growing up in the D.C. area, always taking them as a compliment. But Séraphin wasn’t merely giving his friend props; he was proffering a genuine professional opportunity. More than a few tips or pointers on 3-pointers, he wanted one-on-one training.

After a successful trial period in D.C., Matthews moved to Paris with Séraphin, who was born in France, for the offseason. Matthews took to the role of taskmaster, driving the 6-10 Frenchman, a former first-round draft pick, as hard as he worked himself, and discovered he had a keen diagnostic eye. “That whole summer we attacked all of his deficiencies and his understanding of the art of shooting,” Matthews recalls. “He started seeing a huge change in his shot.”

Indeed, after working with Matthews, Séraphin increased his field goal shooting from .410 to a career-high .551. Matthews’ basketball connections were not surprised. “Friends in the NBA said, ‘You’ve always been talking to us about shooting in your spare time.’” he recalls. “I’m looking at them like, ‘Damn. I guess I was doing that,’ but I never really thought about it because I wasn’t in coach mode.”

Soon, Matthews found himself in that mode full-time. While in Paris he got a call from All-Star center Dwight Howard, who wanted the same juju Matthews had brought to the journeyman Séraphin. Long plagued by erratic free throw shooting, Howard shot above .700 for extended stretches under Matthews’ tutelage. Gradually, more and more people around the league noticed, and the messages on Matthews’ phone kept piling up. For Matthews to become a successful shooting coach, he didn’t have to let go of his past as a player so much as embrace it.

Matthews grew up in a series of hardscrabble sections of Washington, D.C., and College Park, Maryland, just across the District line. “Those areas made me who I am today, because my neighborhoods were very tough,” Matthews says. “I watched friends die. My best friend got killed.”

As a child, Matthews learned the basics of shooting from his father, who worked with him on mechanics. By the time he was in middle school, Matthews’ deadeye shooting had prompted his father to begin calling him “lethal,” an expression the young man would later

build into a nickname and a brand. As a teen, Matthews was taken under the wing by Delonte Taylor Sr., a local legend in the DMV (as the D.C./Maryland/ Virginia metro area is known), who scrapped and scraped to the NBA after paying his way to an open tryout camp. Without Taylor’s mentorship, Matthews says he would never have become the player or person he is. Starting in high school, Matthews began to pay it forward. “I remember helping my teammates in practice with things that they were doing wrong,” says Matthews. “You’re not looking at it as trying to coach. You’re just trying to help your friend and your teammate.”

Among those in the locker room with Matthews was Kevin Durant, who was a couple of years behind him at National Christian Academy in Fort Washington, Maryland. Matthews saw greatness early in the future NBA MVP, a fellow student of shooting with a work ethic that mirrored his own. “To watch Kevin in high school, you couldn’t miss how demanding he was, even in practice,” Matthews says. “He was skinny. He was frail. People used to try to foul him really hard in practice or get him out of his game, but he would never back down.” That resolve was something both Durant and Matthews learned in their hometown. “I think coming up in the DMV area,” Matthews says, “gave us the mindset that we want to make it out of somewhere that a lot of people don’t make it out of. We got to give it everything we have.”

After that, Matthews spent two seasons of college at Washington State, then transferred to St. Bonaventure. As a senior, Matthews came into his own, shooting better than 39 percent from downtown and setting the team record for 3-pointers made in a season with 101 (in 31 games), which led the Atlantic 10 Conference. The improvement was the result of a rigorous daily routine he had developed. Matthews would wake up and work out with the team manager on the court before class, hoisting several hundred shots. At lunchtime he’d skip the cafeteria. “I would eat a snack and have the manager pass to me,” Matthews says. “I’d make 200 shots at lunch.” After a full practice with the team, Matthews would stay on the court to work on form shooting—a slow, methodical, mindful exercise that emphasizes fundamental mechanics. The difference was eyeopening, even for him. “When I first started doing that program, I was like,

Matthews also has shared his Art of Shooting with Michael B. Jordan (left) and Chance the Rapper.

‘Hold up. I’m fucking draining all these shots,’” he says. “I just made that my formula. I was mad that I didn’t do that my whole career.”

Bypassed in the NBA draft and unsigned as a free agent, Matthews quietly took his talents overseas. He played in leagues in Canada, Russia, China, France, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru— even Iceland. In seven years as a pro, Matthews suffered a series of careerthreatening injuries: a broken ankle, knee surgery to repair his MCL and a collapsed lung resulting from pulmonary edema, which kept him hospitalized for a month. Matthews was rushed off in an ambulance after waking to find he couldn’t move his legs. Matthews was trying to work his way back from that when he decided to give up his playing career. To this day he feels the lingering effects of the scar tissue in his lungs. “It was a lot of trauma to my body.”

While it never led him to the NBA, Matthews’ time overseas gave him an appreciation for other cultures and their approach to hoops. “I feel like Europe helped me mentally with understanding the game of basketball,” he says. “I already had the fundamentals, but I just love how they took the time to break them down in practice.” On off days he would watch youth clubs train, to study their approach. “The one thing I respected the most was the level of teaching.”

That experience helped inform his own approach to instructing clients in what he came to call the Art of Shooting, which focuses on retraining his pupils mentally, physically and neurologically. It’s not enough to shoot well; Matthews wants clients to burn the motion into their muscle memory, where your synapses trigger movements in a pattern learned through repetition without deviation.

HOW TO SHOOT MORE LETHALLY

Five tips from master coach Chris Matthews.

Matthews customizes his coaching approach for all his clients, who range from adolescents to NBA All-Stars. But these tenets underpin his Art of Shooting, which aspiring Lethal Shooters can use to get and stay on target.

FORM SHOOTING IS YOUR FRIEND

According to Matthews, the best way to improve is a daily diet of the techniquefocused drills known as form shooting, “to get the dynamic of the fundamentals down.” Stay conscious of each step in the shooting process—dip, jump, cock, release and followthrough—and how it feels. And go slow. “Take your time. If you rush something, you’re never going to master it,” Matthews says. “If you’re shooting fast, how can you feel your mistakes?”

FIRE AT CLOSE RANGE

Good long-range shooters are born close to the basket. Matthews suggests you start by form shooting near the rim—like NBA pros do during shootarounds, and his clients do during coaching sessions. “People think my training is about 3-pointers, but I don’t even let my clients shoot 3s in practice.” Shoot straight on from the wings and sides; once your shot starts feeling comfortable, you can begin moving back a bit.

DIAGNOSE EVERY DEVIATION

Ideally, Matthews says, “as you form shoot, you’ll feel everything you’re doing wrong.” But everyone benefits from having another person observe and critique their shot. If you can’t find someone, take an iPhone video of yourself. The key is to identify inconsistencies in your motion—e.g., your elbow flaring, variations in the release point, the position of your guide hand—and correct them.

THE PROBLEM IS NOT IN YOUR HEAD

One big misconception Matthews hears too often: “That kid can’t shoot because he’s overthinking.” Says Matthews: “I think that’s bull.” A perfect mindset is useless without proper form. If a shooter’s brain gets involved, it’s because he’s aware something physical is amiss. “His mind knows that he doesn’t know how to shoot the basketball properly.”

SWISH AND REPEAT

You need to train your muscle memory by taking lots of shots. He has his pro and elite clients make 500 shots a day, and suggests aspiring shooters make 200 a day during the week and 250 on weekends. Note that Matthews has clients shoot until they make (not take) that many shots. It’s key to keep these drills separate from any strength and endurance training or shooting around you do for fun. “People go to the gym just shooting a basketball thinking that’s a workout,” Matthews says. “That’s why there’s not a lot of elite shooters walking the Earth.” —A.B.

Matthews says he analyzes the shooting of every player in the NBA, even if they aren’t clients.

“Anybody that you might feel can’t shoot in the NBA hasn’t been consistent,” Matthews explains. His gift is the ability to see those inconsistencies, however imperceptible, and correct them. While he is still studying the league’s rookies, he says he has cataloged every veteran’s strengths and weaknesses. “If they’ve been in the NBA for a while, I know exactly why they’re missing.”

Matthews watches NBA, WNBA and NCAA games, taking notes and studying clips and analytics on Synergy, the data analysis tool used by elite coaches. His research on players extends far beyond those he works with currently, because everyone who competes is a prospective client. “I write down what I would do to help that person just in case they hit me up.” That attention to detail and obsessive preparation has paid off. Just this summer, two NBA players approached him with a dose of skepticism, texting, “What do you see wrong in my jump shot?” Matthews replied, “Four things,” and gave each hyperspecific criticism. “They were like, ‘Oh shit—that is it!’”

Such mastery has helped Matthews amass an unparalleled roster of clients. Most of them are now referred to him by NBA teams and agencies—players across the league, such as De’Aaron Fox, Hassan Whiteside, Kenneth Faried and dozens more. He also works with WNBA stars like

He coaches everyone from NBA All-Stars to 40-something executives to gradeschool kids.

Candace Parker and Skylar DigginsSmith, and select college and top-flight high school players. He has taught a world champion boxer (Ryan Garcia) and an actor who starred as one (Michael B. Jordan) to knock down shots. He’s coached all-stars of rock (Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea) and hip-hop (Chance the Rapper, Kanye West, Chris Brown and Drake). And he’s taken the shirt off a fashion designer (his client Mike Amiri, founder of Amiri, foolishly bet Matthews $50,000 he couldn’t make a long-distance trick shot). In addition, Matthews has appeared in over a dozen commercials, and he recently signed a multiyear deal with NBA 2K video games. He’s taught clinics and hosted events for corporate clients such as Nike, the Jordan Brand, Spalding, Stance Socks, the NBA, the NBA Players Association—and now Red Bull.

Matthews will train everyone from 40-something executives to grade-school kids. As he puts it: “If anyone’s touching a basketball, I’m training them.” Although most of it is to earn a living, the work he does for free is among the most rewarding. “People don’t see me post it, but training kids and doing stuff for the community, that’s as satisfying as a client signing a $50 million contract,” he says. If it sounds like Matthews finds his work fulfilling, he does. Although he hears frequent speculation he will join the NBA coaching ranks, he doesn’t sound like a man in a rush. “If the right opportunity came with a team, I’m not saying I wouldn’t take it,” he says. “But that’s just not something I want to do right now.”

Like everyone in the basketball world and beyond, Matthews’ life and work have been upended by the pandemic. During last year’s playoff bubble and the early part of this season, the NBA’s COVID protocols have prohibited independent contractors like him from using team facilities, forcing Matthews to work virtually in L.A. Often he’ll get a text after a game asking what he noticed. “I’ll go back in Synergy and re-watch every clip,” Matthews says. “I dissect every play, text it to that person and hold a Zoom call with my flat screen in the background, breaking down everything I saw.”

The separation and reliance on remote learning led him to begin developing a Lethal Shooter instructional app aimed at top athletes and aspirants alike, “anyone who wants to train like a pro,” he says. “It’ll show them what it takes to become an elite shooter.” He’s been shooting footage of drills, mechanics and form shooting for the skills-training app, which he expects to be released later in 2021.

Matthews enjoys being on camera but never takes it too seriously. He chafes at the notion of being “Instagram famous”— though, with 1.6 million followers, he is. Matthews’ @lethalshooter handle began as a way of showing his exploits as a player but has evolved as he has, to include motivational quotes, photos celebrating his clients and their accomplishments and, this summer in particular, expressions of support for Black Lives Matter protests. Most of all, though, it features displays of Matthews’ shooting prowess that range from the sublime to the ridiculous: Blindfolded with a sweatshirt and pointed toward the basket—swish. From the rooftop of one building across to a basket on another— swish, swish. From one boat in the open ocean to another, carrying a basket and floating away—swish, swish, swish. And so on. Coming soon: An out-of-this-world shooting exhibition while floating in a spacesuit at NASA’s Zero Gravity Research Facility. It’s all good fun. “I just post what my followers like to see,” Matthews says. “And they like to see me shoot.”

Before the New Year he posted a video showing him in a gym hoisting and draining one corner 3 after another. It landed on Instagram just after a video of Steph Curry hitting a remarkable 105 straight corner 3s went viral. The timing led some to speculate that Matthews’ video was an answer to Curry’s, the start of some hot-shooting flame war. Not so. “I wasn’t even intentionally trying to post at the same time,” Matthews says, noting he had scheduled the previously shot video to upload during the holiday break. Matthews doesn’t hit 105 3-pointers in total, much less in a row. The video shows him training as he is, smooth and systematic, consistently precise but not perfect. It includes his misses—one in his first 10, two of 35, and three of 66 in all. The video, just like his shooting 63/66 from downtown, was not exceptional. It was Matthews, “just getting back to training so I can start getting back in the flow” ahead of video shoots for his app. Instead, the video reflects the routine performance of a shooter whose longest streak is 48 straight 3s but who regularly makes 90 of 100 from downtown.

Still, the popularity of Curry’s video, and @lethalshooter content, reflects how basketball culture has evolved to celebrate shooting as much as it does dunks. Matthews is glad to see the NBA rely on metrics he studies, like true shooting percentage (a weighted aggregate of 3-point, field-goal and free-throw percentage), and prize his skill set.

“If I were younger I’d have a chance of making the NBA because the 3-ball is appreciated so much more now than it was back in the day,” says Matthews, who personified the type of 3-and-D player general managers now covet. “If my only job was to play defense and hit corner 3s—I can make a living doing that.” Matthews still receives contract offers to play overseas, many inspired by his shooting displays on social media. But seven years removed from his last game, he no longer has the itch to suit up; he’s flattered but focused on the task at hand.

“I like knowing I have options to play,” Matthews says. “But I like seeing all the people I’ve coached ball out even more. Together they make way more shots than I ever could.”

Matthews has a Lethal Shooter app coming out later this year.

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