Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Free Throws*

Who's the best foul-shooter?
Who's the worst?
Who's the weirdest?
Does practice help?
Does talking to the ball help?
And why is something that looks
so easy so damned hard?

*But Were Afraid to Ask Shaq

It is an ordinary night in the middle of the NBA season. There are nine games, several of which will conclude thrillingly. In Indianapolis, the Pacers are hosting the Wizards, and the clock is evaporating. The game is tied at 82. The house is on its feet. With 36.5 seconds left, Indiana's Reggie Miller nails a three-pointer. Washington comes back with a bucket. The final few seconds are a blur of clawing players and screaming coaches. Finally, the Pacers win 85-84. A television crew sets up quickly on the floor, and Miller explains his heroic shot, which will be replayed on highlight shows the rest of the night. Indiana coach Larry Bird takes off his tie and retreats to his office. He knows a thing or two about games decided at the buzzer. He knows exactly where this one was won, when it was won: at the free throw line, late in the second quarter, when no one was paying particular attention.

Bird, with his genius for simplicity, has a four-word suggestion for any playoff-bound team seeking to improve: Make more free throws. "Free throws are the key to all games," Bird says. Get to the line often; make a high percentage; win fabulous prizes. In the playoffs that credo is even more true.

Four foul shots turned around that garden-variety Indiana-Washington game on Jan. 27 Late in the second quarter the Pacers' pace was laggardly, and the Wizards led by three. In the final minute of the half, Miller-celebrated for his three-pointers, less well-known as one of the best foul shooters ever—tossed in two sweet ones from the line, the balls dropping like snowflakes on a still night. (The free throw is always unremarkable, until it is examined.) On Indiana's next possession Rik Smits, the Pacers center, went to the line for a one-on-one. He converted both. Everyone knows that Smits stands 7'4", a very impressive height. But what also makes him critical to Indiana's success is that he makes over three quarters of his free throws. Instead of trailing at the half—at home, against a .500 team, after three days' rest—Indiana, then a .700 club, was ahead. Those foul shots, Bird said later, made all the difference.

Through Saturday the Pacers ranked 15th in the NBA in number of free throws attempted (1,931), seventh in percentage made (.761) and 13th in total points made from the line (1,470). They also had the league's seventh-best record. Bird, who was a career .886 free throw shooter in the NBA, has created a team in his own image. Given his success as a player and as a rookie coach, it's odd that so few other teams see the wisdom in his way.

Or maybe it's not so odd. For there's nothing in basketball that generates as many conflicting theories and shooting styles and mental approaches as foul shooting does. Practicing makes you either better or worse, depending on which player you ask. Making a high percentage of free throws is either critical or irrelevant to a team's success, depending on which coach you ask. (One who might have a definitive answer is Bernie Bicker-staff, coach of the Wizards, who through Saturday were 26th in the NBA from the line, with a .694 percentage. Had Washington merely achieved this season's league average—.737—in its losses, five of them probably would have turned into victories. Instead of being 37-37 and scrambling to make the playoffs, the Wizards would have been 42-32 and all but in.) The ability to make free throws is the province of either the mind or the body—nobody's sure which. Free throw shooting today is either better or worse than it has ever been.

It's bizarre that there's no agreement on all this, because the free throw is about the only immutable tiling in basketball: The shooter is 15 feet from the backboard, he has 10 seconds to shoot, there's no opposing hand in his face. You might think that by now foul shooting would have evolved into a science, that every player good enough to reach the NBA would make eight of 10 from the line. Not a chance. In Florida there is a former dairy farmer, Ted St. Martin, who once made 2,036 straight free throws. He believes he can turn around any NBA player. The players will tell you otherwise. "I can make them in an empty gym," says Dale Davis, a Pacers forward who, despite Bird's best efforts, through Saturday was making free throws at a .436 pace, .307 below the league average. "The problem is the games."