<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">The Warriors' trip east reunites them with shooting specialist Hal Wissel, who has been scouting the Eastern Conference for the last several weeks. Wissel will travel with Golden State through Friday's game in Orlando and brush up techniques with players. "I watch the games or get DVDs with just the free throws every five games, and then I try to talk to these guys on the phone about it, but it doesn't work as well," Wissel said. "It's got to be worked on every day and the confidence factor is key." The Warriors entered Monday's game shooting 71 percent, or roughly the same clip from last season. In keeping with their up-and-down rhythm from the line, they converted 11 of 19 free-throw attempts a day after hitting 22 of 25 in Toronto. Center Andris Biedrins, perhaps Wissel's biggest success story, snapped his streak of made free throws at 11 by missing his first attempt Monday. Biedrins had been perfect in his last three games.</div> Source
So far individually, Ellis, Biedrins and Davis are way up, while Murphy and Dunleavy, Richardson and Pietrus are a tad down. A big factor to the team percentage is losing Fisher, but I think overall it's better individually since Davis and Ellis are taking most of the FT's anyway.
Diogu is a good FT shooter, his return should help. But man, getting Maggette sure would boost that number -- dude hits 82% and led the league in attempts a few years back -- he can score 7ppg just at the line -- that'd be nice to have a money maker like him to close out games.
Free throws are so fundamental for perimeter players. I cannot understand why our guards cannot hit them... It is like their mental game is crap but the rest of their game is not. It should be a natural shooting motion, just without the jumping. I do not understand why they pull the strings short or shoot too hard. BTW firefox 1.5 is buggy and I cannot type apostrophes... time to upgrade.
<div class="quote_poster">custodianrules2 Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Free throws are so fundamental for perimeter players. I cannot understand why our guards cannot hit them... It is like their mental game is crap but the rest of their game is not. It should be a natural shooting motion, just without the jumping. I do not understand why they pull the strings short or shoot too hard. BTW firefox 1.5 is buggy and I cannot type apostrophes... time to upgrade.</div> I kind of have the feeling that it's like one of those things that some people get and some others don't. Thinking that these people are the tops of the totum-pole as in basketball, we could, would, maybe should assume that they can make FT's, especially guards/shooting guards especially. But I don't know what's the deal. But, hey, if Andris Biedrins can all of a sudden hit 9 FTs in a row over three games then Baron, Mickael, Jason, and the rest should be able to shoot a better percentage. I have never been a good FT shooter either, maybe I should have practiced more, but anyway I don't have any tips or inside ideas on what's going wrong, I just know that they aren't going in, and that's what is wrong! haha.
<div class="quote_poster">Clif25 Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">I kind of have the feeling that it's like one of those things that some people get and some others don't. Thinking that these people are the tops of the totum-pole as in basketball, we could, would, maybe should assume that they can make FT's, especially guards/shooting guards especially. But I don't know what's the deal. But, hey, if Andris Biedrins can all of a sudden hit 9 FTs in a row over three games then Baron, Mickael, Jason, and the rest should be able to shoot a better percentage. I have never been a good FT shooter either, maybe I should have practiced more, but anyway I don't have any tips or inside ideas on what's going wrong, I just know that they aren't going in, and that's what is wrong! haha.</div> Well, Biedrins is so bad he has nowhere to go up (maybe?). Shooting free throws is probably the only thing I can do right now. High arc and it's in, even if I'm off a little bit (I get the lucky roll). Probably 75-80% without practicing and 80-85% with practice. But I cannot dribble fast or jump because of an injury to my left achilles. I am constantly injured... grrr.. If people ware watching me shoot free throws it's no problem. Maybe in front of a few hundred or thousand spectators or so it might be daunting.... especially when tired and the pressure is on. hmmm... but I could make them in-game when I played ball in school. I usually got like 81% or so in a season. I guess my expectations for nba shooting guard or point guard or small forward is really high. I figure if they are in the nba, they must be able to shoot or else they wouldn't be in there.
<div class="quote_poster">Zhone Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">So far individually, Ellis, Biedrins and Davis are way up, while Murphy and Dunleavy, Richardson and Pietrus are a tad down. A big factor to the team percentage is losing Fisher, but I think overall it's better individually since Davis and Ellis are taking most of the FT's anyway.</div> Yep, you can't complain about Baron or Monta, you'd like them to make more but their FT shooting numbers are up quite a bit from their career averages. Biedrins is just amazing to watch improve though. At the beginning of the season it wasn't much of a surprise to us that he was dominating on defense and rebounding, we knew he could if he could stay in the game. But then he shows us his offensive game, which we'd only seen glimpses of before, and now his FT shooting is skyrocketing before our eyes. He shot 30% on FTs last year, hes shooting 58% this year, 64% in December, and hes 12 of 13 in the last 5 games (92%). I don't expect him to keep going at anywhere above 80% but I think its possible he could average 70% on the season and that would be an amazing improvement. Pietrus on the other hand seems to be regressing with his FT shooting, shooting almost the same % as Biedrins at 60%, down about 6% from his career average. <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Diogu is a good FT shooter, his return should help. But man, getting Maggette sure would boost that number -- dude hits 82% and led the league in attempts a few years back -- he can score 7ppg just at the line -- that'd be nice to have a money maker like him to close out games.</div> Agreed, hes a guy who would be great in our system. He can get out on the break and finish with his great athleticism but we've got a bunch of guys who can do that, the real important thing is that when the game slows down hes a guy who gets to the line at will like a superstar. Diogu has the potential to do this as well from the post but right now hes too foul prone and doesn't get any calls from the officials.
I forgot who made the comment, I think it was James Worthy, but it was a great point. He said players these days don't practice free throw shooting properly. Shooting 100 or so free throws in practice creates a fall confidence and isn't practiced under a true game time environment. He said players should practice free throws like they shoot them in a game. In a game you don't get to shoot 100 in a row and develop a rhythm. You only get two shots and you're adrenalines running higher after being fouled. Players should run up and down the court, then stop take two free throws, then continue running back and forth, and then take another two free throws.
