An Extraordinarily Detailed Look at DeAndre Jordan’s Free Throw Shooting

May 6, 2015; Houston, TX, USA; Los Angeles Clippers center DeAndre Jordan (6) attempts a free throw during the third quarter against the Houston Rockets in game two of the second round of the NBA Playoffs at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

Putting aside arguments of whether Hack-a-Whomever should be banned or limited with some sort of rule change, it is probably just as interesting– if not more so–to try and understand why the NBA has so many bad free throw shooters. 23 out of 427 players shot 50 percent or less from the free throw line this season, and 61 players were at 60 percent or less (minimum 10 free throws taken). The league average was 75.0 percent from the line, and for comparison, the average free throw percentage of a player in the Finnish Basketball League was 73.8 percent. The salary disparity is roughly 200x, and considering that free throws account for over 17 percent of all points scored, there would seem to be an enormous economic incentive and potential gain to be had if the worst free throw shooters in the NBA began performing better.

The argument for poor performers can’t be that the players don’t work hard to improve, since they obviously do. Another popular one is that it’s a mental thing, which was addressed comically during the 2011 Sloan Sports when the basketball analytics panel was asked the question “NBA players are the best basketball players in the world, why can’t they make their free throws?”, to which Pacers GM Kevin Pritchard answered “If I said here’s the deal; shoot ten and you made six– and then next I did and said: if you don’t make six you’re going to die, how do you think you would do?”. In some ways the answer that the problem is mental is probably right (although that’s a bit of an unfalsifiable claim), but that explanation still feels unsatisfactory. NBA players are able to handle all kinds of pressure throughout the game, and can a free throw against in February, against the Sixers and up 20-points really feel like you’re about to die?

It could also be argued that poor free throw shooting doesn’t matter for most players, simply that it’s not a differentiating skill and focusing primarily on improving that one skill wouldn’t be the most beneficial and most efficient investment of their time. Players who are shoot poorly from the line are not picked with that specific skill in mind. In the case of DeAndre Jordan that’s just not true, especially in playoff circumstances his value to the Clippers would fundamentally change if he hit 75 percent of his free throws. Jordan goes to the free throw line often enough, and smart players/teams hack him with a frequency (whether intentionally or to stop a layup), that absolutely leaves points on the board, especially if he has to be taken out of games.

2013-2014 NBA Average Free Throw Percentage by Height. By: Mika Honkasalo

I charted hundreds of DeAndre Jordan free throws to understand how he misses, and exactly what he’s doing on each and every shot same and/or different that leads to these results, trying to look at every single thing that happens in his free throws. How players miss isn’t talked about analytically as much as it should be–we have shot charts to show where every player shoots, but it may be almost as important to know and to have “miss charts”, that show what part of the rim the ball hits, whether a players hoots left/right or long/short, to understand precisely how players miss and what mechanics, techniques and situations influence those misses (perhaps some team is already doing this but the data hasn’t pierced the public sphere). Three-point defense is mostly about limiting attempts, but it’s very hard to influence the percentage that an opponent shoots, covered wonderfully by Seth Partnow here. And by now we know what are good shots, but looking at misses could help understand what were “good misses” too, if that makes any sense (variance in peak height during air time and release angle consistency included).

When it comes to using big data, it could be argued that we haven’t really been able to move the needle beyond the low hanging fruit, and I tend to think understanding players misses better, in a real mathematical way, may be something that could produce value.

Watching hundreds of Jordan free throws was grueling, but by doing that I learned some astounding things. For most of the season, Jordan shot his free throws by standing both feet on the line ten toes towards the rim like so:

This lasted until March 13th until one day, and I literally do mean one day, Jordan started shooting differently, by pulling back his left leg which technically should allow Jordan to shoot more freely and with less tension in his upper body. That game was on March 15th versus the Rockets, from that day on DeAndre never shot another free throw with both of his feet on the line and towards the rim, and before that day he had never done it, not even once, in a real NBA game,

Pretty cool huh? The adjustment didn’t have any statistical impact however (or at least in the regular season, Jordan is 43.3 percent in the playoffs, up from 39.7 during the regular season). It’s hard to tell DeAndre’s routine of looking at the rim and how that’s changed. Before the shot he’ll take a quick glance before looking at the ball and then turning to the ball before focusing on the rim again. Interesting work has been done on how pro golfers are able to focus on one part of the ball, compared to high-level amateurs who’ll look at six different parts of the ball before putting, without realizing it. There are techniques to train and become better at aiming at one part of a target, and it would be interesting to know what the Clippers are doing with Jordan when it comes to that type of stuff.

Most of Jordan’s misses are short, and his favorite spot to miss is the front rim and slightly to the left. Nearly 65 percent of Jordan’s misses are short, and from the ones where it’s possible to tell which side the ball fell on, around 70 percent are to the left, particularly on the short misses.

Pressure doesn’t seem to be a problem for Jordan, he’s shooting slightly better in the playoffs and he shot 34.4 percent in the first half of games, compared to 43.2 in the second half– including 48.5 percent (16 of 33) in games that are were within five points in the last five minutes.

After a make DeAndre doesn’t shoot any better than after a miss, pointing to the trouble not being just a mental thing. Jordan doesn’t seem to gain confidence from makes or lose any with misses, and though he goes through hot and cold streaks (several eight and nine-miss streaks), those don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to them. I manually looked through some of Jordan’s hot streaks, but at least a couple of them were kept alive by lucky bank shots–perhaps the takeaway there is that as long he doesn’t shoot short the ball has a better chance of going in. It’s hard to separate anything concrete from statistical noise when it comes to Jordan’s slightly warmer periods compared to the cold ones, and most likely it’s nothing but standard deviation at play.

It has to be harder for a seven-foot human being to move fluidly and build the type of muscle memory, but it does seem baffling at a superficial that some NBA players can’t make free throws. Even if it’s a mental problem you’d think that hitting 80 percent or whatever in practice would very quickly alleviate any concerns. I’m not even sure why the Clippers haven’t tried to just start from scratch and completely rebuild Jordan’s shot. Tristan Thompson switched hands! That’s a bigger step than just working on mobility, agility and muscle memory to figure out a way to have a player make more than half of his free throws.

Again, Tristan Thompson switched his hands! I can’t even.. the NBA is a weird place sometimes.