3 minute read
We call it a free throw by Scott Huler
from Special Issue 2021
by DukeMagazine
11
We call it a free throw, but to get it you need to absorb punishment. Miss your shot while getting whacked and you get two or three of them; make your shot and you get an extra one. If you’re good, it can help you make a team; if you’re bad, it can be why you’re cut.
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But shooting a free throw is the one time in basketball—it’s the one time in ball sports—that a player can score points with no defense and no time elapsing. Time stops. Everybody History The free throw didn’t used to be a has to stand still except throw at all: When James Naismith created basketball, the original rules stated that two fouls in a row for one the player with the ball. team equaled a basket for the other. Soon that shifted to a twenty-foot free All the player at the line shot, then a fifteen-foot one, worth a single point. Anybody on the team has to do is take a breath could shoot it, though in 1924 the rules changed so that the players fouled had and put up a shot. to shoot their own free throws. The free throw, free or BOUNCE: Top, Naismith as University of Kansas not, has played a large athletics director, c. 1920. Left, the original 1891 "Basket Ball" court in role in some of Duke’s Springfield College. It used a peach basket attached to the wall. most memorable games.
Give It Back
On February 8, 2020, the Duke men’s basketball team trailed Carolina in the Dean Dome by ten with under two minutes to play. Duke guard Tre Jones found himself on the free-throw line with 4.4 seconds left, the second of two shots remaining, and Duke still down by two. Fortunately, in recent practices associate head coach Jon Scheyer ’10 (who will soon replace coach Mike Krzyzsewski) had urged Jones to consider just that situation. So Jones was prepared to purposely clank the shot off the front of the rim, grab the long rebound to the right, and wrestle his way to a buzzer-beater to tie the game. Duke won in overtime, but not on a free throw.
Again With The Miss
On April 5, 2021, the Duke men’s team led Butler in the national championship game by a point with 3.6 seconds left when Butler fouled Duke center Bian Zoubek. Zoubek calmly drained the first free throw. But with Butler out of timeouts, Coach K felt that one more point meant less than those ticks on the clock, and he told Zoubek to miss the second. It bounced high, the clock staying at 3.6, until Butler star Gordon Heyward gathered it in and put up a half-court prayer. That missed. Another wise free-throw miss by Duke.
In a 2017 interview with Business Insider, JJ Redick shared some thoughts on free throws:
Speedo Guy
In 2003, Carolina played the Duke men’s team in Cameron, and with Carolina ahead by three, Carolina guard Jackie Manuel was fouled about halfway through the first half. At the direction of a Cameron Crazie named Viking Guy, the entire graduate student section behind the backboard crouched. Patrick King M.Div. ’04 crouched with them, ripping off his clothes. And as Manuel stepped to the line, King, wearing only a Speedo swimsuit, rose slowly from the silence and began undulating like a cobra. Manuel, unstrung, missed the first free throw; with King dancing he missed the second, too. Duke won the game, and King—forevermore Speedo Guy—ended up with an off-the-books assist. Coach K was less impressed, publicly declaring further Speedo displays too crazy even for Cameron. King’s brother’s girlfriend, however, recognized true love when it showed up in a Speedo. She and King are married now. JJ Redick If teams could still send their best shooter to the line, a few more banners would probably hang in Cameron. Duke has had many wizards of the free throw line, but none compared with JJ Redick ’06. In a long NBA career, Redick is ninth-best alltime, hitting 89 percent of his free throws, but he was even better at Duke: 91 percent overall (best in ACC history), and in the 2003-04 season hitting an astonishing 95 percent (143-150), best in ACC history (fifthbest in NCAA history).
BALLERS:
Clockwise, Zoubek, Reddick, and Jones
