OT: Free Throw Article

[Louis]

http://premium.si.cnn.com/pr/subs2/.../04/reilly1211/

Paging Dr. Barry
by: Rick Reilly

Some things in sports make no sense. The foul pole is fair. Olympic divers dive, shower, then dive again. Michael Irvin continues to be on TV.

But nothing in sports is more ridiculous than bazillion-dollar athletes who can't make free throws.

So many players look like they are flinging live quail. Unguarded, 15 feet from the hoop, they've got as much touch as a sumo wrestler wearing catcher's mitts. Shaq is a career 52-percenter and dropping. Ben Wallace is so sorry, he takes paint off the rim. You know it's bad when teammates slap hands with the shooter after he misses. (Hey, Dude! Pretty close!) And all the while there's a perfect solution that every player rebuffs out of sheer vanity.

Rick Barry.

The former ABA and NBA All-Star forward is the second-best free throw shooter of all time (90.0%, behind only Mark Price's 90.4%). He was as automatic as a Bulova, as reliable as sunup. And he shot them all granny style. Underhanded. From between his legs.

"I would shoot negative percentage before I shot like that," Shaq once grumbled. The Diesel has turned down Barry's offers of help over and over. "He said it wasn't good for his image," Barry says.

Uh, Shaq? You take foul shots as though you were heaving a piano at a plate-glass window. What image are you going for? The Hulk?

But it's not only Shaq. Nobody wants Barry's help, not even his kids. Four of his sons have played professionally, but they all refuse to shoot like him. "Dad," his son Scooter once told him, "it's hard enough being your son without shooting like that."

Don't they know he improved Warriors teammate George Johnson by 40%?

Me, I'm a 63-percenter. I found this out by going to my neighborhood gym and shooting 500 free throws. O.K., that sucks, right? But then I did what NBA bricklayers won't do. I went to see Rick Barry.

Now 62, he still looks as if he could come off the bench for an NBA team. Or at least the Knicks. And he can still sink free throws like cops sink doughnuts.

"I make so many in a row, I get bored," he says. His wife, Lynn, says, "I've seen him not shoot for a year and then stand up and make 100 straight. He can make 20 straight with his eyes closed."

"Eyes closed?" I scoffed. "Prove it."

He made 11 in a row his first try.

After about three hours he had me making gobs of them underhanded -- 12 in a row once, five in a row with my eyes closed. The shot is so soft that a lot more balls loaf around on the rim and drop in. And you think, Why don't more people try it?

"Because it's ugly," says my pal Bill Pearson, who played for Wisconsin in the '70s.

I stuck to it. Through snickers and punk kids muttering "gay" and an old guy at the Y one day shaking his head and then saying to his buddy, "That's how guys shoot when they can't shoot anymore."

Oh, yeah? Within two weeks I'd grannied my free throw percentage up to 78. Yes, I looked like Aunt Bea at the county fair, but 78%!

You want ugly? Let's take the stroke of Ben the Brick. At 41.9%, Wallace is the NBA's alltime worst free throw shooter. You could make 41.9% drop-kicking them in an Oscar de la Renta gown. Maybe Ben had that headband over his eyes. "If Ben were serious," Barry says, "I know I could get him shooting better than 70 percent."

Wilt Chamberlain, who for years held the record for the most pathetic free-throw-shooting season ever (38.0%), is one of the few guys to go underhanded in an effort to improve. He got better but then gave it up. "I felt silly -- like a sissy," he wrote in his 1973 autobiography. So he went back to his old line drives.

Had Wallace swallowed his macho, gone underhand last season in Detroit and shot only 20% percentage points better, he'd have made 60 more foul shots. Sixty more points might have made the difference in a lot of games, especially because Detroit could have kept him in at the end of a lot more close ones.

I reached out to the chronic clankers -- Shaq, Wallace, Bruce Bowen (55.0% this season), Emeka Okafor (51.2) Brendan Haywood (42.6) and Tyson Chandler (whose 32.4% threatens the alltime mark) -- and asked the simple question: "What would it take to get you to shoot free throws like Rick Barry?" Not one called me back. Or e-mailed. Or texted. Or had their p.r. guys call me back. Zero. None.

Do you know why? Because NBA players care more about looking cool on SportsCenter than winning games for their teams.

Sissies.

Issue date: December 11, 2006

 

[jibikao]

Shaq cares about image when he shoots the ball?

I don't think anybody wants to learn from Shaq's shooting anyway!

How does Rick Barry shoot the ball?

 

[Russ Smith]

Shaq cares about image when he shoots the ball?

I don't think anybody wants to learn from Shaq's shooting anyway!

How does Rick Barry shoot the ball?

It's not really granny style although it is underhand, but the ball spins off the fingertips. I went to one of Barry's camps when I was a kid, think I might have been 10. As you might expect it's the Rick Barry camp, but you had very little interaction with Rick himself. But he did spend about 10 minutes showing us his freethrow and then counselors tried to teach it to us, it's not easy but if he's willing to work with someone I have no doubt they'd get better. I grew up a Warrior fan I vividly recall Rick helping George Johnson but Clifford Ray refused to try the underhand style. Back in those days they did the 3 to make 2 rule when fouled on a shot, in the penalty, saw Ray miss all 3 for a hat trick more than once.

My personal theory is the guys who have the most problems on freethrows are the guys with huge hands because the tendency is to palm the ball when they shoot, that's what Barry always preached with George Johnson.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Do you know why? Because NBA players care more about looking cool on SportsCenter than winning games for their teams.

Sissies.

If I shot 500 freethrows, I guarantee that I would be over 50%. Probably closer to 65-70 with no coaching.

 

[Mulli]

Negative percentage? Come on, Shaqfu.

 

[Bufalay]

i think if i took 500 i'd make about 475. they're freethrows

 

[scoutmasterdave]

i think if i took 500 i'd make about 475. they're freethrows

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The very best free throw shooters in NBA history barely shoot 90%.

 

[Black Jesus]

There is a difference shooting 500 in a row and being fouled, and shooting one or two at a time.

I sometimes will shoot 100 straight freethrows to calculate my percentage in sets of 10. The first few sets of 10 will usually be around 6 or 7 and then ill make 78 and then 8-10.

so my first 50 may average out to around 70%, whereas my last 50 is around 85%.

Not to mention I am shooting them alone in a gym.

Imagine shooting with a crowd, with pressure, after you were just fouled on your arm, and then you are shooting 1 or 2 at a time up to about 10 a game over a season.

Guarantee your percentage would be about 10-15% worse than what you do alone. I am sure Nash doesnt miss in practice at the FT line. Hell i have made 30 straight once, i dont want to know how many he has made in a row.

 

[scoutmasterdave]

I can imagine Steve Nash throwing in 475 of 500 (95%) in practice, but he's a professional basketball player with picture-perfect form from 20 years of dedicated practice. I'd be willing to bet $50 that nobody on this board could do it right now - 5% is just such a ridiculously small margin of error.

 

[myrondizzo]

I can imagine Steve Nash throwing in 475 of 500 (95%) in practice, but he's a professional basketball player with picture-perfect form from 20 years of dedicated practice. I'd be willing to bet $50 that nobody on this board could do it right now - 5% is just such a ridiculously small margin of error.

i'll bet you i can make 5%

 

[mribnik]

It's not just the high percentage that's hard, but the pressure you'll feel when you get up there. Try making 100 layups in a row, it's not as easy as it sounds. You'll start thinking about it a lot after a while.

 

[arthurracoon]

plus, imagine your dead tired while shooting the FT's. work out till your arms and legs feel like jello and then shoot the FT's