Why Are NBA Big Men So Useless At Free Throws?
Ah yes, it’s the prevailing riddle of our times. Professional basketballers who have battled their way to the absolute peak of the sport and yet still cannot seem to perform this simple, routine task. Free throws are as fundamental as it gets, you stand 15 feet back and shoot, all alone with nobody guarding you. Hence they call them ‘free’.
If you’re a Steve Nash, Steph Curry or Dirk Nowitzki, then you will have gone entire seasons making over 90% of them. If you’re a regular player the numbers are probably closer to 75-85%. However there are a selection of players out there, today and in the history of the NBA, who can barely even make half of them.
It’s a massive issue and it’s one that’s been thrust into the spotlight in recent years because of the so-called Hack-A-[insert FT muppet here] strategy, one that the NBA recently took measures to help protect by banning intentional fouling in the final two minutes of all quarters. With that there are now eight minutes out of 48 in which terrible free throw shooters are protected from having their glaring weakness exploited – which has been happening more and more. The prospect of intentional fouls sending the likes of DeAndre Jordan and Dwight Howard to the line has meant their coaches are having to remove their best rebounders and post-players from late-game situations, plus there’s the fan point of view where people are sitting there courtside or on their couches watching this premier sporting spectacle and being subjected to this rubbish that slows the game down and, you know, it’s just generally dumb to watch people who aren’t good at things try to do those things.
But then while the league could take further action to protect these guys from themselves, there’s also another perspective to worry about. Most NBA players aren’t that bad. It’s rewarding those who are to shield them from all that and plenty of current and former players have come forward with the suggestion that the best way to solve the hacking issue is for these fellas to get back in the gym and work harder, make themselves better. Obviously, if it were that easy then they would have done that already.
In reality, it’s a complicated situation and a difficult one to solve. What’s curious is that most of the terrible FT shooters out there all play in the same position: centre. Across the 2015-16 season, of the 19 players that shot worse than 60% with at least 100 free throw attempts, 13 are players who primarily play at the five slot and only two were guards (Elfrid Payton and Rajon Rondo). Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell were the two finest players of their generation and each had career FT%s in the 50s. Shaquille O’Neal always struggled with them, they named the Hack-A-Shaq after him. This is a pattern that most people have spotted but one that nobody has yet been able to fully explain.
Most likely because there isn’t one reason why NBA big men are so poor at shooting. If there were, then how would you explain Dirk Nowitzki or Kevin Durant, two current players in or around the seven-foot mark (Dirk’s definitely a seven footer, while KD might be but he lies about it) who are superb free throw shooters, up there with the best the sport has even seen? Lots of people have theories. Some of those theories may even hold a bit of weight. Here are some of them.
Lack of Practice
This is the easy answer. People who are bad at free throws could just try harder. Not earning enough money at work? Try harder. Marriage falling to pieces? Try harder. Not tall enough to ride the rollercoaster? Try harder. It’s such a silly answer.
Again, if trying harder were the answer than it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. There isn’t a player out there with a free throw problem that doesn’t spend extra hours in the gym. It’s embarrassing to miss free throws, to not be able to help your team late in close games. They all want to fix that. And sometimes in putting in the extra hours they might figure out a little adjustment that helps or they might get more comfortable with the shooting motion. That could pay off with an improvement in the numbers too. Trying harder isn’t the be all and end all to the issue… but to be fair, not trying would be worse.
Height Disadvantage
In being taller than most other players, obviously the big men have a natural advantage when it comes to rebounding, dunking and playing in the paint. But it could actually be a weakness as far as FTs go. Think of the arc of a free throw shot. Think of the shape and position of the hoop. The hoop is round and you want that ball to fall down through it, so the best angle for the shot to take is one that loops in that rainbow arc and therefore comes down as vertical as possible. The flatter the shot, the smaller the target are gets – the ball’s more likely to come rocketing back off the rim.
That sweet arc happens to be a lot easier to achieve for shorter players than it is for taller ones whose release point is much higher. The ball being shot from lower means that the ball is falling through the hoop higher in its parabolic downswing – shout out to year 11 maths. Less time for the ball to drift off-course. The taller player then supposedly needs to counter than by lofting it higher which takes more control and that’s a factor in itself (see the next theory).
Frankly, it all makes Dirk Nowitzki look like even more of a genius. Take a look at the rainbow that his free throws travel in.
Big Hands
This is a bit of a weird one but it makes sense in some ways. Bigger players have bigger hands. Bigger hands make the basketball smaller compared to other guys and a smaller object is tougher to manoeuvre like that. As suggested in a pretty superb ESPN piece the other day, have a go at shooting free throws with a tennis ball and see what the difference is. Hell, try them with a golf ball. Try playing soccer with a tennis ball. Try playing anything with a tennis ball that isn’t tennis. It is a bit trickier, it’s true.
Of course, Kawhi Leonard has enormous hands and stunning ball control so it doesn’t work for everyone. Still there’s more to this theory than there appears. The bigger bodies don’t move as athletically (who’d win in a shuttle race between Andre Drummond and Russell Westbrook, right?) and the mechanics of a pure shooting motion don’t come as smoothly. A slight angle that’s missed there and the ball comes clunking back off the rim.
Out of Range
Okay, now how about this one. DeAndre Jordan shot an NBA-high 70.3% from the field last season and yet his free throw figures were back at 43.0%. Why the discrepancy? Of his 381 field goal makes, including playoffs, 347 of them were made at the rim – 240 of those were dunks. He made 11 of his 39 jump shots and attempted only four from further than 10 feet out. The free throw line is 15 feet back.
To put it frankly, maybe he’s useless at FTs because he doesn’t usually shoot from that far away. That’s not uncommon. Of the 10 best FG% in the league last season, none of those guys shot better than 62% from the charity stripe. Andrew Bogut, Dwight Howard and Steven Adams all in that group. All three of them are players that have been hacked in the past, Bogut and Howard actually seem to have gotten worse over the last few years. Adams, on the other hand, upped his free throws from 50% to 58% last season while also shooting increasingly better from beyond the rim. Funny that.
Here, by the way, is DeAndre Jordan’s shot chart from the 2015-16 season:
A Particular Set of Skills
Fitting into that last idea, there’s a pretty solid reason why players with such deficiencies can still make it to the top. Finding seven footers is not easy, especially those who are athletic enough to be decent at this thing. You can’t teach seven foot, as they say.
Since there is such a limited pool of talent there and it’s near impossible to compensate for that, it’s more likely that those players that fit the bill are going to make it to the NBA than it is for, say, a six foot four guard with proper handles and an alright jump shot. So it’s also more likely that they’ll get as far as they do with holes remaining in their skillset. More players to choose from and those with free throw troubles would fall by the wayside.
Preeeessuuuure
And here we come to the most pervasive part of this whole thing: the mental side. As soon as it becomes known you’re average from the line, it becomes a *thing*. Opposition fans will remind you of it whenever you step up. Opposition coaches will foul you on purpose, letting you know that they don’t fear you, that they’re going to take advantage of your weakness. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that plays out in front of a very large audience. You’re shooting with that doubt already in your mind.
This is where it becomes so hard to overcome, because now it’s expected that you’ll miss. As soon as you indulge the idea of missing, something that otherwise should have been automatic becomes another hurdle to leap – especially when it happens in front of a crowd. Dwight Howard has been claimed to make over 80% in practice but as soon as he takes the stage in games, well that drops off to the mid-50s. He’s been taking extra steps this off-season to figure out how to deal with the pressure:
Of course, if you’ve been listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast then you’ll know that there is an alternative out there. Hall of Famer Rick Barry was one of the greatest free throw shooters in history and his trick was that he shot them underhanded. For a single season, Wilt Chamberlain shot his underhanded and it was during that season that he had his fabled 100 point game, shooting 28 of 32 FTs in that one. This from a career 51.1% free throw shooter. But he stopped after that single season pretty much because he looked stupid shooting them underhand and despite the embarrassment of missing FTs, the embarrassment of making them while looking dumb was apparently worse. Again, a mental hurdle.
Nobody really followed Barry’s example, except for his son, Canyon, and Chinanu Onuaku, who just got drafted by the Houston Rockets (you know, the team who in recent years has had to indulge Dwight Howard, Clint Capela, Montrezl Harrell, Josh Smith, Donatas Motiejunas and their poor FTs). Those were the only two fellas in college basketball shooting the so-called granny shots. Kinda weird, that.