Flettner Rotor Perfomance

http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/shs/Climatechange/Flettner%20ship/Seifert%20Flettner%20apps.pdf

This design is pretty cool, but a fan not just a rotor....

Maybe this is what you're looking for...

"On a cylinder, the force due to rotation is known as Kutta–Joukowski lift. It can be analysed in terms of the vortex produced by rotation. The lift on the cylinder per unit length, F/L, is the product of the velocity, v (in metres / second), the density of the fluid, {\displaystyle \rho } (in kg / m³), and the strength of the vortex that is established by the rotation, G:^[4]

where the vortex strength is given by

where s is the rotation of the cylinder (in revolutions / second), ω is the angular velocity of spin of the cylinder (in radians / second) and r is the radius of the cylinder (in metres)."

The Magnus effect, depicted with a backspinning cylinder or ball in an airstream. The arrow represents the resulting lifting force. The curly flow lines represent a turbulent wake. The airflow has been deflected in the direction of spin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect

Another easy way to demonstrate the effect is by making this simple toy.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/1102804/Re-Magnus-Effect

If you don't have a huge dam available, you can throw a beach ball with backspin and it will curve visibly upward.

Is this the type of spin that allows basketball players to make a long distance free throw ?

I'm not a basketball player, but I suspect that spin put on the basketball mainly affects the action when the ball bounces off the backboard.

From #2, the amount of lift force is a product of the linear velocity and the spin.

The velocity of a dropped ball off the dam (#3) is considerably more than that of a basketball thrown in a game.

You can throw a curve with a beachball fairly easily because the beachball is so light that a little force causes a large deflection.

A baseball pitcher throws the baseball very fast and spins the ball when throwing a curveball, deflecting the ball enough to confuse the batter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball