On March 4, 2009, we received a bunch of emails from friends all over the country. “Hey, did you guys see the article in The New York Times on Free Throw Shooting?” After the first contact, we got right on the net and did a quick search. Sure enough, there it was. In big, bold, undeniable print we saw the facts as we thought they were. For years, we suspected that this was the case, and now the statistics were telling the truth.

John Branch is The New York Times reporter who penned the article. Here is our version of his report. If you want to read the whole article itself, you can find a link at the bottom.

Over the years, basketball has changed in many ways. We remember going to Detroit in the early 1990’s to watch our Pistons win back-to-back NBA Championships. Thomas, Dumars, Laimbeer, Rodman… a real cast of characters all in their oh-so-short shorts! Shoes have changed. The triangle offense was introduced in Chicago. Lots of changes.

“But one thing has remained remarkably constant: the rate at which players make free throws.“

At the college level, free throw shot percentage has essentially remained unchanged in the last 50 years! It is a fact. In 1969, according to Branch, college men shot at 69%. Today, in 2009, it exactly the same. The free throw shot percentage for college men has dropped as low as 67.1, but never gone higher than 70%. A remarkably consistent percentage.

In the NBA, the percentage has been about 75% for the last 50 years or so. Free throw percentage for women accelerated over the years and then leveled off at the same percent as the men.

In his article, John Branch quotes Larry Wright, an adjunct professor of statistics at Columbia University in NYC. We contacted Larry and learned about his interest, and his research. He gathered his data from the NBA website, but is working directly with the NBA for much better data set that is more user friendly. Larry told us that while playing intramural games at UCLA he twice shot over 20 free throws in a row, and in practice while at Caltech, he put in 156 in a row! Larry gave us some tips on doing our own research on the “Nothin’ but Net” FREE THROW TRAINER.

“One really interesting thing I've noticed is that free throw shooting is an extremely individual thing. Each player has his/her own way of shooting free throws,” wrote Larry. He is so right on.

Larry Wright and John Branch seem to have same message. While the stats in other sports show consistent improvement, free throw shot percentage has remained essentially flat. Consider this from The Times:

Ray Stefani, a professor emeritus at California State University, Long Beach, is an expert in the statistical analysis of sports. Widespread improvement over time in any sport, he said, depends on a combination of four factors: physiology (the size and fitness of athletes, perhaps aided by performance-enhancing drugs), technology or innovation (things like the advent of rowing machines to train rowers, and the Fosbury Flop in high jumping), coaching (changes in strategy) and equipment (like the clap skate in speedskating or fiberglass poles in pole vaulting).

Let’s summarize Professor Stefani’s four factors:

1. Physiology
2. Technology or Innovation
3. Coaching
4. Equipment

Think about it. Don’t we all expect that the overall performance level in sports will gradually improve as human beings gain strength from better conditioning and nutrition? Think of all the new basketball shoes that have been invented over the last 50 years. How much has coaching improved? However, as a group, men and women basketball players have not gotten better (or worse) while shooting from the free throw line. Amazing. 

“It’s unbelievable,” Larry said as he studied the year-by-year averages. “There’s almost no difference. Fifty years. This is mind-boggling.”

Here is an important paragraph from John’s article in The New York Times:

“A lot of coaches give it lip service, but when you say that games are won and lost at the free-throw line, you better back it up,” said Reid, who understands that individual players and teams can improve free-throw shooting through better technique and repetition. When Reid arrived at Southern Utah two years ago, he inherited a team that ranked 217th in free-throw percentage.

There is the pivotal truth. We put it in red.

Utah outshot opponents from the line in overtime this season winning twice. They also won 1 point victories twice. Points scored in a game from free throws are generally less than 20%, and so free throw shooting tends not to get as much coaching.

But don’t we all know that when you are the one standing at the line at the end of a game, you wish you were the best shooter on the team, and you wish your percentage was way high!

Go back to Professor Stefani for a moment. He observes that of the four areas where improvements can be seen don’t really seem to have impacted free throw shooting much at all.

“There are not a lot of those four things that would help in free-throw shooting,” Stefani said.

But wait!

The “Nothin’ but Net”™ FREE THROW TRAINER, when used as prescribed, holds great promise for increasing free throw shot percentage just enough to make a huge difference. You have to get into the mental model behind the FREE THROW TRAINER to appreciate the enormous shift that it creates. It is a huge difference.

Utah experienced significant improvement through better technique and repetition. There it is. Better technique and repetition. It works.

And when you are the guy at the line, you want your “free” shot to really count.
Swoosh. “Nothin’ but Net”

To read the full article (for as long as The New York Times has the link available) go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/basketball/04freethrow.html