Why Can't NBA Players Make Free Throws?

http://hoopshype.com/2015/08/03/why-cant-nba-players-make-free-throws/




Why can't NBA players make free throws?



August 3, 2015- by David Nurse
David Nurse is a professional shooting coach. You can learn more about him at PerfectShotsBasketball.com, the best shooting and skills basketball website in the world. You can also follow him on Twitter @davidnurse05.








The most common question I hear from the regular NBA fan is ‘How can a player be in the NBA if he can’t make free throws?’ I usually just laugh it off and point to all the positives that make players vital assets to their team. But when you think about it more in depth, really, why are some NBA players horrible at free throws? And to take it even deeper, what is the real effect it has on their teams? Let’s check it out.

Put this in perspective, Kareem Abdul-Jabar is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer at 38,387 points. He was a 72.1 percent free throw shooter. Very respectable for a seven footer.

Fifth on the list is Wilt Chamberlain at 31,419 points. Wilt was a 51.1 percent FT shooter. Directly behind him on the All-Time leading scorer list: Shaquille O’Neal at 28,596. Shaq is an official synonym in Webster’s dictionary for not being able to make a free throw. But actually a better career free throw shooter than Wilt at 52.7 percent. Regardless, both Wilt and Shaq left a lot of points on the table due to their inability to convert at the free throw line.

How many points you ask?



Shaq made 5,935 free throws throughout his career, but missed 5,317. So he’s not going to make them all obviously, but let’s say he shot Kareem’s 72.1 percent for his career. That would have been an extra 2,177 points to his career total. Wilt, he missed 5,805 free throws throughout his career. If he shoots the same as Kareem from the line, he is third on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with an extra 2,748 points to his name. Opportunity cost, opportunity lost. The name of the game for free throw shooting.

All the individual statistics and records are great, but the most powerful impact is felt on the team. Would L.A. now be the Clippers’ city if DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin don’t go a combined 23-47 (48.9 percent) over the final three games of their 2015 playoff series with Houston? Free throws win and lose games, and hold the power to alter history.

The tangible negative aspect of free throws is obviously the lost of points on the board. But what is rarely ever talked about is the morale boost/loss of missed free throws. It’s very demoralizing for a team to step to the line and miss a pair of free throws. Most coaches and teams hold the theory that defense leads to offense. However, I would contend that it is just the opposite; points on the offensive end lead to increased intensity on the defensive end and overall team morale boost.

Over the course of the 2014-2015 NBA season, after a team converted on both free throws their defensive points per possession was an average of 0.878 on the next possession. When they missed the pair of free throws, the points per possession rose to 0.935. That’s the equivalent of nearly a six-point swing.

Let’s keep going deeper. Of the Top 7 NBA teams in free throw percentage last season, six were playoff teams. Three of those teams were also in the Top 5 in defensive points allowed. The others were either in the Top 10 or very near it. As you can see, there is a direct correlation between free throw percentage and team defense. So it only makes you wonder, what is the real direct impact on games won vs. games lost based on free throw percentage.

Credit 82games.com and a study based on a team free throw shooting percentage of 78 percent as the standard (2014-2015 league average was actually 75 percent, the lowest it has been since 2005-2006 season). The results of the study showed that if the losing team had shot 78 percent from the line every game (as opposed to the percentage that they did shoot), they would have won 5.6 percent more games, which cumulates to an average of around two extra wins per game.

Think the Oklahoma City Thunder could have used two additional wins last season?

So the question is, how can NBA players earn so much money, and in some cases, earn max contracts and still not be able to make a free throw to save their life (or their team)?

Are their hands too big to shoot free throws? Nope, that can’t be it. Kawhi Leonard, with some of the biggest paws in the game, shoots 80.2 percent.

Are players too muscular and athletically tightly bound? That can’t be it either. The most explosive athlete in the game, Russell Westbrook, shoots 81.9 percent from the line.

Then what is it?

https://vine.co/u/949865738561277952


Being a shooting coach for NBA players, the biggest thing I teach my guys is confidence. The second most important thing I teach? Confidence. And I continue to breed and breed confidence into them. Think about it, if a player steps to the line questioning himself, feeling all the eyes of the crowd on him, and genuinely feeling uncomfortable, there is no way he is going to succeed. But if the player steps to the line with the mindset ‘automatic points’ and feeling comfortable and relaxed then he will have a much better chance of making those free throws. Literally, free throw shooting is between 80-90 percent mental. Simple as that.

It’s very similar to golf. Five-foot putts should be automatic for the best in the world. But they’re not. It’s the difference between a Tiger Woods in his prime and a David Duval falling off the face of the map. It’s as simply stated as confidence and as simple as doing the same exact routine every single time while in game-simulated situations.

Dwight Howard has openly admitted that he shoots better on the road because he doesn’t feel the weight of the entire home crowd on his shoulders, as if he’s more concerned about letting them down than succeeding at the line. It’s a known fact that DeAndre Jordan shoots above 75 percent at practice when the statistics are recorded, but yet it is night and day difference in the game. And you know it’s an issue when the league is in a debate about adding a rule to James Naismith’s game based on a player not being able to make free throws.





Here is one of the main reasons why players and teams struggle from the free throw line: Most like to end practice and workouts with ‘make x amount of free throws.’ How many times in a game is a player going to sit at free throw line and shoot 50 in a row? Practice like you play, right? Isn’t that preached at every single basketball program throughout the globe?

In summary, why do some of the best players in the world struggle mightily from the free throw line?

1. Confidence and consistency in routine at the line – 80-90 percent of the battle.

2. Improper practice. Instead of shooting a mass of free throws, the most effective way to practice free throws are at random times throughout the session and a maximum of three at a time.

3. Mental approach. Knowing every shot at the free throw line is going in, instead of hoping it goes in.

That’s it. There’s no magic analytical concocted secret to it. It’s not hand size, muscle size, nothing physical. It’s extremely simply complicated (if that makes sense).

Basically if you want a good indicator of whether your team is going to make the playoffs or not and if they are going to lock down on the defensive end, look first at their free throw shooting percentage. It will hold the key to the future.



bob
MY NOTE: A whole lot of it is mental. We've all seen where a usually good player goes to the line and bricks a few and then nobody on the team can hit them. His point about Kawhi Leonard's hands is excellent and takes away whatever excuses Rondo and Howard and Jordan might try to use. We saw Doc and McHale both employing hack-a-(fill in the blank) strategies. That series boiled down to which one of their horrible free throw shooters was less horrible on a given day. The key to victory often goes through your opponent's weakest link. People talk about how Jordan and Howard could overpower us inside. Well, let them try, I say. Every time the ball goes into them in crunch time I'd foul them and put pressure on them to not be responsible for an empty possession from the line. Force their coaches to take them off the floor in crunch time so we can't do that and we've just eliminated their big advantage, right? Then it comes down to execution and they'll be executing without a key player while we'll be executing with all our key players because we can hit our free throws.

I think this guy makes complete sense. We know that Ray Allen is a machine at the line because he is a creature of habit and does the exact same routine every time. It makes sense to try and simulate real game scenarios when practicing and that includes free throws. Nobody takes 100 free throws in a row in a game, they take 1-3 and that's usually after running full court and wrestling for rebounds etc. If I was a coach, I'd blow the whistle after a scrimmage and have my players run to assigned baskets (most gyms have more than 2, there are some along the sidelines) and take 3 free throws and then run back to do some more scrimmaging. Everybody runs, everybody rebounds/passes/shoots and then everybody has to stop, settle down and hit some free throws. Just like in a game.


.

There's no single factor that can be blamed for poor free throw shooting. The reasons differ from player to player. Lack of confidence is obviously a factor in many (most?) cases. But I don't believe lack of confidence is primarily a cause. I believe it's mainly an effect of the combination of shooting mechanics and shooting "feel" developed in one's formative years.

One reason why big guys are more prone to poor foul shooting than small guys (on average, with obvious exceptions) is that, from an early age, a lot of big guys learn that their easiest path to basketball success involves a mentality of getting inside, elevating, and shooting with mechanics that minimize the arc they have to put on the ball. Huge hands only exacerbate the tendency. Palming the ball on a shot (or even in ballhandling) is an attractive option for such guys because it's such an obvious way to control the ball; and sometimes the palming mentality spreads to smaller guys with huge paws (Rondo?) who grow up trying to prove that bigger guys are nothing special.

But the majority of smaller players quickly learn that they've got to get their shots over the hands of opponents by putting arc on the shots. The best (only?) way to shoot in an upward/forward motion (so as to achieve accuracy when the ball is on the downward arc and out of the shooter's control) is to shoot off the fingertips with a sensitivity that (with a lot of repetitions) breeds a leap of faith on the part of the shooter that what goes up must come down where they want it to.

Meanwhile, many of the bigger guys develop no such leap of faith. Their shooting confidence comes from propelling the ball forward (or even downward) more than from propelling the ball upward. The big guys' shooting "feel" is more tactile and horizontal, while the "feel" of smaller players emanates from the instinct grooved in rolling the ball upward and forward off the fingertips on just the right trajectory.

As the importance of being a stretch—whatever grows, young players, regardless of size, should be induced to cultivate the upward/forward finger roll in order to develop accuracy from outside a seven-to-ten-foot radius. The big guys will learn to discriminate between the mechanics required for a slam dunk and the mechanics required for a successful outside shot. Free throw percentages should improve accordingly.

Sam

Given DeAndre Jordan's often poor form and the fact that he misses so many free throws by a LOT, his problem is more than just a lack of confidence or having a feeling of doubt when the bright lights are on. He may hit 75 percent sometimes in practice, but he does that sometimes in games, too.

Make your free throws. Learn proper mechanics, practice proper mechanics, learn to clear your mind and focus. It's not that hard.

"Being a shooting coach for NBA players, the biggest thing I teach my guys is confidence. The second most important thing I teach? Confidence. And I continue to breed and breed confidence into them."

It seems that few horrible freethrow shooters have horrible mechanics.  D. Jordan's form looks okay.  Ditto with Rondo.  Player's like Rondo and Jordan sure LOOK better shooting FT's than Joquim Noha, a good FT'er, whose  form no coach or shooting coach could have taught.

Maybe horrible FT'ers with good mechanics need a hypnotist or a shrink more than a shooting coach.  But I guess they tried that with Wilt all to no avail.

It seems that there are very few horrible free throwers who become good ones--Karl Malone comes to mind--but many players who are acceptable from the line who then decline over the course of their careers to become horrible.  Guys like 'Toine Walker, George McGinnis, Bill Walton, Nate Thurmond and most infamously, Otis Birdsong come to mind but I'm sure there are more.

Seems that there's a razor thin difference separating the good or even the great from the horrible.  Remember a few years ago when Ray Allen came back from injuries and began missing FT's?  His form looked exactly the same.  Ray, of course, worked it out.

Rondo tried a lot of free throw mechanics, but I always thought most of them avoided the basic fact that his #1 free throw instinct was to cock his wrist by his ear (out of his peripheral field of vision, palm the ball so it wasn't on his fingertips, cock his wrist, and shoot with a wrist flip rather than releasing and guiding the shot off the fingers. Fingers are a much better directional guide than the palm of one's hand. Once in a while, he'd hit 8 in a row as he seemed to be finding a comfort zone, but he'd invariably slip back into the bad old ways.

Sam

Sam

I really think that in most cases--like the shooting coach said in the article-- it's confidence rather than mechanics. Noah has the ugliest free throw mechanics of any player I've ever seen--a one and a half handed push-squeeze with a bizarre sideways rotation but he hits them at a decent clip.

Don Nelson had that one handed shotput. Dick Barnett would twitch one foot behind the other as he released his FT.

Remember the late Hank Gathers? His strong hand was his right but he shot FT's with his left. Henry Bibby shot them from the side of the free throw key.

Ray Allen's mini FT slump was interesting in as much as his mechanics looked exactly the same after he came back from injury. He pretty quickly regained his customary results even if his adjustments were too subtle for most of us to detect.

Noah's form looks goofy, but he's guiding the ball with his fingertips.  Nelly shot like a shotputter, and he could palm the ball and stop in mid-shot.  But the reason is that he didn't really palm the ball.  He used some type of stickum on his shooting hand.

There's a current Celtic (I think it may be Crowder) who favors one side of the free throw line in shooting freebies.

I didn't like much about the movie "Blue Chips" because I wasn't a Shaq fan.  But I loved the scene where Bob Cousy (probably around age 65) is playing the athletic director and Nick Nolte comes up to talk with him as The Cooz is shooting free throws.  Cooz systematically drains freebie after freebie until Nolte explodes, unscripted, "Don't you ever miss?"  So, without a word, and unscripted, Cooz shifts to his left hand and starts draining lefty freebies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gDLsZlLEPw

God Bless Bob Cousy!!!!

Sam

Ray Allen himself had kind of an odd form by conventional wisdom; Ray hardly bent his knees but would rise up on his toes on the release. I can recall Auerbach doing color commentary on locally broadcast games saying, "Bend your knees Don, bend your knees" as Don Chaney went to the line.

Rick Barry clamed that he could teach anyone to shoot at least 70% with his underhand granny shot. As far as I know the only player who took Barry up on the offer was George Johnson a good back-up center who shot FT's like Shaq. After he switched to the underhanded style he did hit in the high 60's to low 70's.

After Barry retired he couldn't understand why teams didn't hire him as a FT coach. Well Rick maybe your obnoxious personality had something to do with it.

That's a riot, Sloop. I had exactly the same first thought about Rick's personality.

Sam