Over the past half-century, ballet dancers who perform Sleeping Beauty at London’s Royal Opera House have been raising their legs higher and higher. (More here.) So why, over the same time period, have professional basketball players not improved their free-throw shooting?
Ballet Dancers Have a Leg Up on Basketball Players
TAGS: art, basketball
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NBA players today spend less time in NCAA programs than a generation ago, which can affect free throw shooting specifically, and fundamentals in general.
It’s seems to be a matter of preferences, not ability
From the BPS article:
“aesthetic form evolves over time, reflecting a mix of changing audience taste and artistic creativity.”
“It’s unlikely this trend for steeper leg angles is simply a reflection of dancers becoming more bendy and agile over the years. The same trend was seen even for relatively easy positions in which the leg-raising dancer is supported by a partner.”
Because nobody gets paid to make free-throws. Today the game is all about the dunks, showboating, and three-pointers that get you on ESPN. Making two clutch free thows barely gets you a mention in the paper.
You can bet, for example, that if Shaq’s compensation was partially tied to his free-throw percentage, he might have become a better free-throw shooter over the years.
When I went to high school 20+ years ago, my coach wouldn’t take anybody on the varsity that couldn’t shoot 75% from the line. So when you played JV, you spent a lot of time practicing free throws. I bet that most of today’s NBAers barely practice free throws at all.
And you know what…poor free throw shooting costs teams at lot more games than they are willing to admit.
These days, in school, if you try to turn in an essay written in longhand, you will get denied. Penmanship used to be a skill with broad application, now its only useful for thank you notes and fruit baskets. People don’t have as much reason to work on their handwriting anymore, so people’s handwriting has gotten much worse.
The set shot used to be a skill with broad application, now, if you try to pull that in a game, you will get denied. People don’t have as much reason to practice their free throws because the skill no longer translates to the rest of the game.
There is also the fact that teams are at least partially selective with who they foul. Shaq gets fouled a lot because he is bad at free throw shooting. Players that are very good shooters usually get fouled at a much lesser rate. Shaq has a very high field goal percentage and a very low free throw percentage. This makes it a relatively harmless, maybe even beneficul, to foul him. On the other hand, someone like Ray Allen has a very good free throw percentage, but his field goal percentage is lower than Shaq’s because he takes more difficult shots. It almost never makes sense to foul Allen, because he makes about 90% of his free throws, which far outpaces the expected number of points he would get on a field goal attempt.
If there was a significant jump in free throw shooting ability across the league, the number of fouls committed would likely decrease or become more focused on a small group of poor free throw shooters. I could shoot a better percentage of free throws than many pros, but I would never be fouled because my expected outcome on a field goal would be quite poor.
I think it is hilarious that some of the arm chair basketball commentators think that free throws are a dying art. Are you kidding me!? More money than ever is being spent on advance scouting, nutrition, personal trainers, etc. Secondly, it is completely possible that in general that foul shooting has gotten better in general but teams are fouling or setting up defenses better to avoid the better shooters. I’m not sure why people are getting so hung up on this. Basketball is all about being efficient on every possession (did anyone notice the NYT article mentioned that 3-point % has gone up and FG % has gone up!?)
Why would the one have anything at all to do with the other?
Ballet dancers have been lifting their legs higher in the last 50 years yet the Republican Party hasn’t been able to elect a mayor in Chicago in that same time period. Discuss…..
A few years ago, purely out of curiosity, I did a similar study and found the opposite result: NBA free throw percentages had improved markedly since the early days of the NBA (circa 1950) and appeared to approach a plateau in the mid 80′s. The difference is that I took only the average of the top 50 or so free throw shooters each year (the only info available on the nba.com/encyclopedia website). Perhaps the mean has stayed nearly the same but the variance has grown — i.e. an increase in both the number of good and bad shooters.