<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">OAKLAND - Troy Murphy knows how strange it must look to see a scruffy-haired, 6-foot-11 man walking down the sidewalk while pantomiming shooting a basketball and repeating the same three words over and over again: Down and up. Down and up. "When I'm walking around the city, I practice, and people look at me like I've lost my mind," Murphy said. "But if it makes me a better free-throw shooter, I don't care." Neither does the Warriors organization. The repetition of that phrase is just one part of a comprehensive free-throw shooting plan put together by Hal Wissel, a shooting savant whom Golden State has brought in to try to rectify the team's wretched performance at the line. Last season, the Warriors finished 26th out of 30 in the NBA in free-throw shooting, at 71.8 percent. More critically, they often wilted down the stretch. As Murphy bluntly put it, "It's very important to us, because we choked so many times at the end of games last season." Wissel, who was hired as an assistant coach for player development last month, has honed his precepts over a four-decade career that includes stints at Fordham and Lafayette and NBA jobs in Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, Milwaukee and New Jersey. He began working with select Warriors in mid-September but knows their foibles from much earlier than that, something Jason Richardson found out this week. When Wissel met with the Warriors' top scorer for the first time, the coach pointed out flaws in Richardson's foul-line form dating as far back as 2001-02, his rookie season in the NBA. "I knew right away what he was talking about," Richardson said. "He nailed it. ... He can do a lot for us. He knows what he's talking about, that's for sure. He picked up the little things that were ruining my free-throw shooting just like that."</div> Source Hilarious!
Troy Murphy at least shot better than Richardson, and he's a power forward! But... I'm glad they are all working on their free throws for the benefit of the team. Free throws are like a golf swing sometimes. It's hard to do unless you practice and become more natural and fluid. Pretty soon guys could become good like Earl Boykins. He can shoot them blind folded. But he's not as money as guys like Ray Allen, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Peja Stojakavic, Rip Hamilton. Guys who can shoot.
