Fundamental Flaws: The Lost Art of the Free Throw

Broken remote ... broken bones ... broken dreams ...
Conceptually, casual and avid basketball fans perceive free throw shooting as a simple, straightforward procedure. In reality, the "charity stripe" continues to serve as an agonizing, embarrassing, and highly invasive operation, delving deeply into the afflicted player's psyche, physical skill mastery, and sense of calmness (or lack thereof) under pressure. An increasingly alarming number of college and professional basketball players transform the uncontested, 15-foot reward into "a shot in the foot" punishment. The most epic single-game free throw meltdowns include Memphis free "throwing away" the 2008 National Championship, All-American Jason Williams' multiple "charity-chokes" at Duke, and Magic swingman Nick Anderson's career-altering airway obstruction in the '95 NBA Finals. The prolonged, painful inability of today's players to regularly convert in ordinary situations as well as in the clutch, certainly requires a further examination of futility.

The Good: The ultra-rare, elite free throw shooter embodies intense focus, fearlessness, and fortitude. For the skilled few, the exercise is performed with a superior sense of graceful effortlessness. Top-25 college basketball teams Duke and BYU are the current gold-standard for "extra-point" proficiency, compiling terrific team percentages of 77.4%. Appalachian State guard Donald Sims (94.4%) and Golden Bear Jerome Randle (93.5%) lead the nation with near flawless percentages. The University of Chicago's aptly named, Robo Kreps, converted all 18 attempts earlier this season in a contest against Detroit. The NBA's foul-line finest are former-MVP Steve Nash (93.8%) and Randy Foye (93.4%). Thankfully, team percentage-wise, the NBA posts improved overall totals compared to its collegiate predecessors. Proficient free throw prowess exists not merely as a male-dominated trait; the Drexel and Marist women's squads are currently amassing team percentages over 80%. Indiana State's Kelsey Luna has delivered at a 93.4% clip thus far, while professionally, Sacramento's Nicole Powell has converted 94 of 96 attempts.

The Bad: Besides Mac Koshwal, DePaul fields an extremely inept overall squad, magnified by a pathetic 56.9% as a team at the line. Fortunately, for top-25 programs such as Texas (62.1%) and Kansas State (65.4%), free throw performance does not only always directly correlate to wins and losses. The opposite end of the spectrum also exists, most notably manifested by sharp-shooting Coppin State (74.4%), who possesses a ho-hum overall record to date of 5-15. Amongst the NBA's worst (qualified) free throw shooters are the historically-horrible Shaquille O'Neal (51.5%) and porous point guard Rajon Rondo (59%). The Memphis University men's reputation for foul line dysfunction remains only rivaled by their female counterparts, currently shooting a "glass is half-empty" 50.9%. Go out to the driveway now, attempt 20 free throws and call it a day, while basking in the glory of likely shooting superiorly to college basketball's best and a future Hall of Famer.

The Ugly: The Detroit Piston, "big-blunder" Ben Wallace, deserves the dubious distinction as arguably the NBA's most feeble free-throw fraud of all-time with a painstaking career percentage of 41.9%. To place the futile feat into proper perspective, 11 other NBA players are currently shooting a higher percentage from the three-point line. Other candidates for "charity-stripe Grinch" are the atrocious trio of Andris Biedrins (2-20), Josh Boone (8-31), and Jamaal Magloire (13-39). The immortal wisdom of Charles Barkley best illustrates such catastrophe, "terrible, terrible, terrible."

The Verdict: Basketball's unsolved free-throw "miss-tery" remains an enigmatic, unexplainable phenomenon of puzzling, peculiar player performance. Insufficient confidence, overconfidence, nerves, frenzied fans, insufficient practice, poor technique, an underdeveloped routine, inefficient weight transfer, improper balance, or a coach's casual approach serve as the leading suspects for the aforementioned "charity-crimes." Inevitably, the ongoing erosion of the sport's most basic fundamentals such as free throw shooting is rapidly fostering unhealthy levels of fan frustration on a nightly basis. A nostalgic daydream journey back to the days of free throw legends Rick Barry, Calvin Murphy, and Mark Price may be just what the doctor ordered.

References: (All stats current as of February 4, 2010)
Page 2 Staff, "Readers' List: Worst Choke Artists." http://espn.go.com/page2/s/list/readers/chokes.html.
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/stats.
http://www.nba.com/statistics/player/FreeTS.jsp?season=22009&league=00&conf=OVERALL&qualified=Y&position=0&splitType=9&yearsExp=-1&splitDD=&pager.offset=100.
http://web1.ncaa.org/stats/StatsSrv/rankings?sportCode=WBB.