Shaquille Oneal.....An Epiphany

[Colt McCoy]

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Also - do you people play basketball, or have you ever shot a free throw before? WTF at all this "Shaq is a lazy piece of garbage and should be shooting a higher FT%". It's not merely the size of his hands that hurts his abilities. There's manual dexterity / "feel" issues - Shaq just doesn't have it (much like many poor shooters in the League e.g. Ben Wallace), whereas say Yao or Chris Kaman do so can hit FTs in the 70-75% range.

-Al

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I think everyone (with the possible exception of Thremp) agrees he's not a naturally gifted freethrow shooter. That doesn't explain why he just refuse to try something that might make him a better one, especially considering it could make a big difference for his team. My calling him lazy had more to do with him continuously being overweight and being unwilling to do anything about it, and his taking the regular season off.

[capone0]

I don't think your right at all. What you mean to say is on average the worst free throw shooters are big men, not that extremely tall players are bad free throw shooters.

There are many tall players who can shoot. Okur, KG, Dirk, Yao, David West, Brad Miller, Randolph, Z, etc.. But of those who can't shoot, a majority of them are taller players.

I don't have a list of all free throw shooters but of the bottom 10 players who qualified on ESPN's list of free throw shooters (125 free throws), the bottom 5 are all over 6 foot 10.

Maglorire-54%
Dwight H-58%
Emeka-59%
Zo-59%
Darko-60%
Curry-61%
Anderson Varejao-61%
TD-63%
Ruben Patterson-64%

Of the top 50 who shoot free throws and are qualified, only Dirk, Yao, KG, Randolph, David West, David Lee are considered 4/5s. So on average the good shooters are shorter, which makes sense. I don't think a vast majority are bad, just a vast majority of bad shooters are tall.

[EvanJC]

[ QUOTE ]
I had an epiphany.

There are people that understand the concept that being abnormally tall/large makes it more difficult to do simple, yet coordinated tasks like shoot FTs.

And there are people that don't understand this concept.

[/ QUOTE ]

this argument is so bad

[DrewDevil]

I believe that anyone could shoot at least 75% from the line with enough practice. It's pretty much common knowledge that NBA teams/players don't practice that many FTs, right?

I bet if Shaq shot 500 FTs a day during the offseason he would improve dramatically.

[Jack of Arcades]

I think it's more like that:

Guys who are 6'9" or taller are the only players in the NBA who can succeed without a jump shot. These players are not going to be good free throw shooters.

[Thremp]

[ QUOTE ]
I think it's more like that:

Guys who are 6'9" or taller are the only players in the NBA who can succeed without a jump shot. These players are not going to be good free throw shooters.

[/ QUOTE ]

Because they don't practice it... I'm glad you see the background bias thats in the above arguments.

I'm not saying that Shaq should spend his time working on free throws, but to say his can't do it is assinine. He may in fact have to shoot granny style or actually listen to someone else instead of doing the ridiculous things he tries. Lets cover some basic things he doesn't do that almost every great free throw shoote does: hold the ball normally, bend his knees, don't fall forward, and many other things that he does very very poorly. To suggest he's physically unable to shoot above his really mediocre mark is just assinine.

[Jack of Arcades]

No, I mean these guys just never develop jumpshots because it never really matters and after a certain age the train has left the station. Would you expect any of these guys to suddenly knock down 15 footers consistently?

Also, Shaq's Mechanics have varied wildly with the influence of different coaches and he still never got above 62%. His mechanics were pretty good when he first got into the league, and he still only shot 59%.

Also, Shaq = fat. Sure, knocking them down in practice is easy enough, but those aren't game conditions. Reggie Miller would practice by sprinting down the court and back and then take a few free throws.

I think Shaq might have been able to get his FT% up to 70 if he had really worked at it in college or early in his career. In the middle of his career or late in his career it's just too late. I also don't think it would have been worth a ton (2.5 pts per game?)

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
I think it's more like that:

Guys who are 6'9" or taller are the only players in the NBA who can succeed without a jump shot. These players are not going to be good free throw shooters.

[/ QUOTE ]

This makes sense, and almost certainly has to be right. The arguments some are making about "But they're so BIG! Their arms are too long to throw basketballs properly" are bizarre.

[Jack of Arcades]

Well, I don't know if there's more inherent difficulty in developing a jumpshot when you're that tall. It might be that since you don't have to, players don't do it. It's also possible that it's just better to focus on post-up moves rather than waste your time, but maybe it really is hard to be 6'9"+ and be able to shoot consistently. Some guys obviously get around this, of course, but still.

Edit: It's like the argument: why can't LHB hit LHP? Is it harder, or is t just that the small percentage of lefties makes it possible for lefties to be platoon players but not righties? Maybe it's both.

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, I don't know if there's more inherent difficulty in developing a jumpshot when you're that tall. It might be that since you don't have to, players don't do it. It's also possible that it's just better to focus on post-up moves rather than waste your time, but maybe it really is hard to be 6'9"+ and be able to shoot consistently. Some guys obviously get around this, of course, but still.

[/ QUOTE ]

I doubt they're inherently less coordinated, or even that they don't work as hard on that stuff (though that's quite likely, too.) It's just that they have enough of a compensatory skill set that they don't have to be the top of the top in terms of coordination, shooting, etc. to make it, unlike the shorter guys.

Also, even if "coordination" has the same distribution for all heights, just because the population of 6'4" guys is going to be significantly larger than the population of 7' guys you'd expect to see a lot more coordinated 6'4" guys. There likely just aren't enough 7' guys to see the real outliers in terms of ungodly coordination.