It’s A Disgrace, I Tell Ya’

I read a sports highlight blurb this morning which noted that, in their VICTORY yesterday, the Los Angeles Lakers made two free-throws out of fourteen attempts…an abysmal 14.3 percent efficiency, if you can call it that. And, yes, it was an all-time NBA record for futility.

For those who don’t know, a free-throw is awarded to a basketball player when he has been fouled (interfered with) by an opponent during play. The fouled player gets to go to the free-throw line, which is 15 feet from the hoop, and shoot an uncontested shot.

The free-throw shot was considered so easy in the early days of basketball that the reward for being fouled was always known as “going to the charity stripe”. It was a gimme; professional players routinely made 80 to 90 percent of such shots. Jerry West, whose image is on the NBA logo, averaged 82 percent of his charity tosses. He loved those freebies.

The NBA record for consecutive made free-throws is 97 straight by Michael Williams of the Minnesota Timberwolves. A non-professional player named Ted St. Martin once made 5,221 free-throws without a miss, and another non-pro named Fred Newman made 88 straight while blindfolded. (I’m not making this up!)

I played high school basketball, and, at every level, players had to conclude practice by shooting free-throws. As I recall, after varsity practice, a player couldn’t head for the showers until he had made 8 out of 10 free throws. We all showered every day…and our classmates appreciated it.

My point is that everyone could make these things fairly easily; in fact, we used to be able to bounce the ball, off the floor, into the hoop with a little effort.  I’ll bet that we could have made better than 2 of 14 goofing around like that. And, my buddies and I who did these stunts weren’t even first-string players. (Note: That may be why we were not starters; we were having too good a time amusing ourselves! We used to bank basketballs off the gym wall…into the hoop…on a dare.)

Our “star” player who had me riding the pine was named Oscar Guerrero, and he did end up playing college ball at my alma mater, Cal State Los Angeles.  But, he wasn’t nearly good enough to go pro…no, Sir.  Out of the tens of thousands of really good basketball players on this earth, only the top 400 or so make NBA rosters each year. These guys are basketball prodigies: the  cream of the crop.

Which…makes it so incredible that any professional basketball player can miss a large portion of his free throws! These guys get PAID to play basketball, and many of them make many millions of dollars per year. The average NBA salary is $6.4 million, and a number of players make about $30 million per year.

The best player in the game today is Stephen Curry, who, in addition to making about 42 percent of his shots outside 30 feet from the basket, also makes about 92 percent of his free-throws. Now, THAT’S what I call doing a professional job.

Conversely, Ben Simmons of the Philadelphia 76ers was the first overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. He makes about $6 million per year, is considered a “star” player, and… makes less than 56 percent of his free throws! What a bum.

Although…that is a tad better than the career stats for Shaquille O’Neal, one of the top ten NBA players of all time, who averaged about 52 percent from the charity stripe. If Shaq could have made 80 percent of his charity tosses, the Lakers would have won a couple more NBA titles.

A big Lakers fan, I hated Shaq when he would step up to the foul line and casually fling the ball toward the backboard, seemingly without purpose. Opposing players fouled him on purpose (they called it “Hack a Shack’), because of his inability to convert his “free” shots. He sucked…but made up for it in other ways, like toying with his opponents in the key, using his 100-pound butt to clear his path to the basket.

 

Wilt Chamberlain, who was the greatest scorer in NBA history, averaged 46 points per game in 1966-67. However, his free-throw efficiency was only 38 percent; he averaged less than four free-throws made in ten attempts.

I was actually an NBA fan at that time, watched Wilt Chamberlain play, and could not, for the life of me, understand why this athletic specimen (he was also an Olympic-caliber high jumper) had so much trouble with free throws.

What was Wilt the Stilt thinking when he went to the foul line? (Note: In an autobiography published long after he retired, Wilt claimed to have slept with 20,000 women during his career. Wow, that’s a lot of…sleeping! Perhaps Wilt was thinking of his next conquest, each evening after the ball game, when he stepped to the charity stripe and failed to concentrate on his shot? It’s probably difficult to shoot the ball when you’ve got a couple of naked women waiting back at the hotel. I’m just sayin’.)

Just sayin’ again: Incredibly, Wilt Chamberlain owns the NBA record for free-throws made in a game: 28. For some reason, he made 88 percent of his charity tosses that night! I’m guessing that he had no plans after the game, if you know what I mean.

It really all comes down to coaching. If your coach focuses on the fundamentals, and makes them a priority, then you will practice and hone your fundamentals. Much has been made of UCLA’s great coach John Wooden and his “Pyramid of Success”.

This was a coach who drilled fundamentals every day in practice. Wooden was a three-time All American basketball player from the era when players were expected to make 80 to 100 percent of their free throws. No player on one of his UCLA teams was allowed to treat free-throws, or any other part of the game, in a casual manner. Wooden’s UCLA teams won ten national championships. He would have shown Shaq the door.

Which gets us back to the Los Angeles Lakers and their apparent cavalier attitude toward free-throws. Not one player on the Lakers is averaging 80 percent from the free-throw line, two of their starting players are averaging under 70 percent, and their star rookie Lonzo Ball, who was the 2nd overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, is averaging 48 percent from the charity stripe. That is deplorable; a totally unprofessional effort. Ball’s shooting technique remarkably resembles that of Shaquille O’Neal…a half-assed fling toward the basket, a prayer that usually remains unanswered. It’s a disgrace for a professional basketball player. He needs some shooting lessons; where’s Kobe Bryant when we need him?

The Lakers team as a whole is averaging a crummy 68 percent free-throw efficiency, making about 15.6 of 22.9 per game. If their free-throw “made” percentage improved to 80 percent, which is what should be expected from professional basketball players, the team would average 2 more points per game. Over a season, that would translate into more wins in the close games, and wins have been in short supply lately.

If the Lakers could allow the civilian, Mr. Fred Newman, to shoot their free-throws blindfolded, they would improve team scoring by almost 7 points per game and would have already won five more games this season.

I think Lakers coach Luke Walton needs to do more coaching.

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *