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A sinking feeling At least someone around here can shoot a free throw
Posted: Monday May 29, 2000 05:54 PM
Every morning, or at least every morning when he's not traveling, Dr. Tom Amberry heads to the gym to shoot free throws. For an hour and a half or so -- sometimes it takes a little longer -- he hoists his shot, runs down the ball, resets, then hoists another. One hundred, 200, 300, 400. He shoots 500 shots a day, with the same motion, the same rhythm. First his left foot on the line, then his right. His right hand goes to the same place, his thumb in a channel, the longest finger down the middle, the inflation hole on the ball pointed up. Amberry makes a lot, too. A heck of a lot. He misses, like, three a day. You may have heard of Dr. Tom, hands-down the world's best free-throw shooter. He once made 2,750 straight. Had to quit because they were closing the gym. He's listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. He's been on Letterman. "I know it's going in the basket," says Dr. Tom from his home in Seal Beach, Calif., and there is not a shred of braggadocio in his breath. "I don't have to hope or pray." A few miles up the road, the Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal makes nine straight in one game. Whoa. Stop the presses, already. It is absolutely painful watching O'Neal at the line. It's embarrassing, almost, to watch someone so talented, so obviously athletic struggle with what you have to figure should be kind of a slam dunk, really. O'Neal isn't the only one, granted. But O'Neal is the biggest target for those who scream about declining skills and players who simply can't do the basics. And, with a free-throw history like his -- in these playoffs, he's put up 169, way more than anyone else, and made just under 48 percent of them -- O'Neal makes such a big, big target. "He has other thoughts," Amberry says kindly of O'Neal, a career 53 percent shooter from the line. "If you had $120 million, you'd have other thoughts, too." That, of course, is the secret behind free throws. Always has been. It's a mental thing, one that can bounce around a player's head so much that mechanics -- what there may be of them -- suddenly get all jumbled up. You see Bryon Russell of the Jazz at the end of the series with the Blazers short-arming two freebies? Off the chart with the wince-factor on that one. Or Chris Dudley of the Knicks any time? Ug-ly. It's all a mystery to Dr. Tom, a retired podiatrist who set that Guinness record almost seven years ago. Dr. Tom, now 77, has worked with college teams, high schoolers, youngsters. He sells a videotape "Make Every Free Throw" and a book "Free Throw : 7 Steps to Success at the Free Throw Line." The NBA could learn a few things from Dr. Tom. "I cringe, then I feel sorry for them," Amberry says. "Some of them don't care. If they get a free throw, they get it over as quickly as possible, because they know they're not going to make it." Part of the problem, too, is that players just don't work on free throws anymore. It is, on almost any level, one of the last things players do during practice. If a player puts up 100 free throws at a practice, he's working hard. And chase down your own rebounds, or even your makes? Yeah. Right. "That's 20 minutes [of work]," says Dr. Tom. "They spend that much time hooking up their Walkman." If Shaq would only listen to Dr. Tom. "Don't become fixated with the results. Fixate on the process," he says. "If you fixate on the process, the results take care of themselves." Maybe O'Neal is finally on to something. Maybe Sunday's perfect game from the line is the start of something special. "I think if I could develop some consistency," the league's MVP smiled after the Lakers' win, "I could become a great player in this league one day." Maybe, Shaq. But you're still 2,741 short of the record. John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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