While guards shoot in the 70% range, Big men often shoot in the 60's. Not really a humongous difference in reality. But has there ever been a weirder 10-15% statistical difference in sports stats than that? Why do big guys struggle?? And why can they often never fix it? Dwight and Shaq have probably shot more free throws in practice than any shooting guard on their teams. I feel sure about that. Not more shots, but more free throws in practice, and certainly in games. What gives. Knowing that, I never get riled up when a Festus or Damian dude misses a free throw, mainly because I have come to grips with the reality that there is a hard to figure, but true disadvantage to them. Three possible reasons:
1) You try being that big and see if it affects your shot - Maybe it's a hand-size thing or a more body to coordinate thing.
2) Short kids take all the shots in the pee wee leagues - All those 75% guards are only at this level because they had great motor skills early in childhood and had to develop their perimeter game to achieve. Thus they shot early and often in life.
3) Missed developmental windows - Huge kids on a hoops team are put under the hoop right away. And many of them don't even play hoops early because they aren't coordinated or are playing football, etc. But whatever the reason, they usually aren't working as much on ball handling and shooting and more on posting and rebounding. There may be a window of motor development, during which you can learn the motor skill well, and after which, you can't as well. Just like Jordan being unable to hit the curve. Some specialists say he missed a crucial developmental hitting stage in HS as he went towards all basketball. And he could never get that to happen, trying later on, despite being the best athlete on Earth.
The point is, you might want to yell at a big man for not blocking out. Fine. But you might want to look at their free throws with a refreshed understanding of reality. It's just not the same thing for them. See tons and tons of hall of fame examples who practice tons and tons and never improved. It's just rare to see a big jump. And it's rarely a matter of skipping free throw practice.
1) You try being that big and see if it affects your shot - Maybe it's a hand-size thing or a more body to coordinate thing.
2) Short kids take all the shots in the pee wee leagues - All those 75% guards are only at this level because they had great motor skills early in childhood and had to develop their perimeter game to achieve. Thus they shot early and often in life.
3) Missed developmental windows - Huge kids on a hoops team are put under the hoop right away. And many of them don't even play hoops early because they aren't coordinated or are playing football, etc. But whatever the reason, they usually aren't working as much on ball handling and shooting and more on posting and rebounding. There may be a window of motor development, during which you can learn the motor skill well, and after which, you can't as well. Just like Jordan being unable to hit the curve. Some specialists say he missed a crucial developmental hitting stage in HS as he went towards all basketball. And he could never get that to happen, trying later on, despite being the best athlete on Earth.
The point is, you might want to yell at a big man for not blocking out. Fine. But you might want to look at their free throws with a refreshed understanding of reality. It's just not the same thing for them. See tons and tons of hall of fame examples who practice tons and tons and never improved. It's just rare to see a big jump. And it's rarely a matter of skipping free throw practice.
