Published: November 3, 2009
Standing at the free throw line with 20,000 fans yelling and stomping their feet isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to find yourself. Throw in the fact that Dwight Howard entered this season shooting a putrid 60 per cent from the “charity stripe” during the course of his career and it’s easy to see why he might suffer from a little anxiety each time he trudged to the line.
For some reason, however, something clicked with Howard on Sunday during a game against Toronto. Instead of his coach gritting his teeth with each miss, Howard surprised everyone in the building by shooting an impressive 14-16 from the free throw line.
Everyone, it seems, except for Howard and his coach.
“I think with him and his free throw shooting it’s simply a matter of transference,” Stan Van Gundy explained to the media after the game against Toronto. “There is no question to anyone on our staff, or to Dwight himself, that his free throw shooting and his mechanics have improved. We watch it in practice every day and he shoots it better now than he did last year in practice. For whatever reason, through seven preseason games and two regular season games, it just had not transferred.”
On Sunday afternoon things transferred and it seemed as if Howard couldn’t miss.
Late in the game, with the Raptors pulling within striking distance, the crowd at the Air Canada Centre were on their feet stomping and yelling. Even the Raptors mascot did his best to distract Howard by standing on a garbage bin while wearing a suggestive bikini.
Howard calmly went to the line and hit both free throws to help Orlando pull ahead 113-107.
After the game Howard chalked his success at the free throw line to feeling comfortable and finally trusting his mechanics.
“I was just free,” a relaxed Howard told Hoops Addict after the game. “Everybody is trying to tell me what to do when I’m at the free throw line instead of just letting me go up there and shoot it. If I make it, I make it. If I miss it, I miss it. Nobody is going to be perfect. I think tonight I didn’t care too much about the result as long as I did what I had been doing every day in practice.
“I just felt real proud of myself for stepping up and not allowing anything to frustrate me at the line or get in my way of going out there and knocking those free throws down.”
And that has been the problem with his free throw shooting the past few years: if he missed his first few free throws he would become frustrated and would ditch what he had been doing in practice. Hardly the kind of way to establish consistency or find a rhythm shooting free throws.
Van Gundy is aware of this and was pleased to see Howard stick with what he had been doing in practice and see some positive results.
“I think part of it is a mental thing when he misses the first one or two free throws and he doesn’t stay with his technique,” Van Gundy explained. “Today he made the first couple and he stayed with his technique and I think that’s the key. If he’ll just stay with his technique he’s like anyone else – he’ll miss some free throws but he won’t go into these slumps if he can just trust himself and his technique.”
Sticking with his free throw technique is easy when things are going well, the key is if Howard can stick with things when he clangs a couple of free throws.
If Howard can be consistent with what he’s been working on in with the coaching stuff in practices then it looks as if he may be able to ditch his rep as one of the worst free throw shooters in the NBA.
