Free Throws: LeBron James’ Achilles Heel
LeBron James is nearly indomitable as a basketball player — so why is his biggest weakness so decidedly mortal?
AS LeBRON JAMES stepped to the free-throw line, preparing to shoot a technical free throw, his former teammate and Brooklyn Nets star guard Kyrie Irving said what many around the NBA question: why is LeBron James shooting this free-throw?
The date was February 18, 2021, and as James stepped to the line and missed, a giddish Irving was seen saying, “That’s your best free-throw shooter?” in a mocking tone, a moment that quickly went viral.
But perhaps, Irving should know better than most about James’ free-throw shooting struggles, having seen first-hand the metamorphosis of LeBron’s free-throw struggles in Cleveland.
Things weren’t always this way for the now 36-year-old superstar, as in his early years, as his three-point shot slowly developed, so to did his free-throw shooting.
The peak of James’ free-throw shooting probably came in Miami, when, as he played some of the most efficient basketball we’ve seen from a modern NBA forward, he looked to new teammate Ray Allen for advice.
His goal? An 80% free-throw percentage, something he’d approached 2008–2009 with the Cavaliers and in 2011–2012 with the Heat.
He worked with Allen during the postseason, focusing on using less leverage from his knees and legs, and instead focusing on his arm extension, follow-through, and set-point. Given that Allen was one of the greatest shooters ever, these changes would stick, right?
They did not.
As will become a common theme, the most consistent aspect of James’ free-throw shooting is inconsistency, and according to Tom Haberstroh (then of ESPN), James ditched his 80% project with Allen after one 4/8 performance in the Eastern Conference Finals. It got to the point where the Heat staff would openly ask if LeBron’s free-throw routine from the night before would carry over to the next game.
But, these struggles would only amplify in James’ return to Cleveland, creating a strange paradox: as LeBron aged, his control of the game and shot-making continued to grow; yet, simultaneously, his struggles from the free-throw line continued to worsen.
Meet LeBron James’ Achilles’ heel: free-throw shooting.
THE DATE WAS April 15, 2017. Coming off a regular season that saw the Cleveland Cavaliers struggle mightily with inconsistency, LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love were getting set for their first-round series against Paul George’s Indiana Pacers.
Shrewd viewers noticed something different about James this game: his free-throw routine. Clearly influenced by Kyle Korver, another one of the NBA’s greatest shooters ever, James implemented a “turn” (the rotating of one’s feet to the left/right to align their elbow and arm to the rim), as well as a smaller knee-bend.
This was far from what James has typically done in the past, as he has a traditional, “squared-up” footing (meaning both of his feet point straight at the basket), and he has a profound knee-bend as well.
So, once again, James had a simple task at hand: finding a way to consistently make his free-throws.
Of note, the 2016–2017 season was a disaster for LeBron James in terms of free-throw shooting.
Tom Haberstroh found eighteen, that’s right, eighteen, variations of James’ free-throw “routine” that season, with many combinations and permutations of dribbles, ball-spins, foot placement, and knee-bending that resulted in the worst free-throw shooting season of his career up to that point.
To illustrate how bad things got for James, on Christmas Day of that season, he tried shooting free-throws from 16-feet away from the basket, standing a foot further than most players do. Three years later, Dwight Howard would try that same strategy to fix his own free-throw shooting woes (ironically while on the same team as James), but Howard is a 53.0% free-throw shooter.
Going back to the playoffs, after going 6/9 in Game 1, and a paltry 7/14 from the line in Game 3 (which nearly spoiled a 41 point, 13 rebound, 12 assist masterpiece), James ditched Korver’s advice altogether.
In fact, Indiana made a point of putting James on the free-throw line throughout the fourth quarter, and their plan nearly worked to success, provoking memories of the “Hack-A-Shaq” (intentionally fouling bad free-throw shooters) strategies employed throughout the 2000s.
Post-game, reporters asked if the free-throw shooting had become a mental hurdle for a player, who, in the year prior, had handled incredible amounts of pressure while guiding his team back from a 3–1 deficit to win the NBA championship.
Haberstroh cited one source close to LeBron at the time who cited the “yips,” or, more specifically, the mental short-circuitry that occurred in LeBron’s mind while performing the decidedly simple task of making free-throws. In that way, James was somehow more similar to Ben Wallace, Shaquille O’Neal, Dwight Howard, and other notorious star big-men who have faltered from the line throughout their NBA careers.
After the series against the Pacers, a disaster in terms of free-throw shooting, he was back to square one, like he had been for so much of that season.
In fact, going back to Kyrie Irving’s comments about LeBron shooting his team’s technical foul free-throws, he was right: nobody who has taken as high of a volume of technical free-throws as LeBron has been as inefficient, and midway through 2016–2017, James gave up the practice altogether, ceding that responsibility to Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving.
THINGS WOULDN’T GET better for James in his first season L.A.; in some ways, things would get even worse.
James, less than a month into his Lakers tenure, 1/6 on free throws taken in the final minute of a one-possession game. He had missed two free-throws in an overtime game against San Antonio — at a point when his team hadn’t even won their first game of the season — which cost them dearly.
Ten games later, with the chance to give his team a one-point lead against the lowly Atlanta Hawks, James missed two more go-ahead free-throws — this time being saved by the fact that he got a put-back dunk to give his team the lead after corralling his miss.
In post-game interviews, James lamented his struggles from the “chartiy stripe,” saying, “I’m garbage. I suck from the free throw line right now… I’ll get my rhythm back.”
Throughout the year, he consistently (for the most part), stuck to a free-throw routine in which his left foot stepped back, in a motion simulating a catch-and-shoot scenario (shown below).
Only, that footwork is unconventional for many reasons, perhaps the most obvious of which is the fact that catch-and-shoot scenarios are far different from free-throws.
If it seems like LeBron rushed during his free-throws against the Spurs in overtime, it’s because he did: his new routine (which, of note, was the one routine out of the 18 he tried in 2016–2017 to stick with him), was causing more harm than good.
On the season, he finished at 66.5%, the worst mark of his career, and his inconsistencies plagued him from start to finish.
Heading into the 2019–2020 season, he implemented a pumping motion before shooting the ball, changing his free-throw routine again, which, as Stan Van Gundy noted to Tom Haberstroh and ESPN, is an occurrence that happens “once or twice a career, maybe.” Yet, this was at least the 19th time James had changed his routine.
Despite a promising start to the season, when he shot 82.8% through November 1st, LeBron’s percentages would once again taper off, including a paltry 62.8% mark for the entirety of November.
During January, with one of the worst free-throw percentages of his career, on the lowest volume of attempts in his career, intervention was needed.
After shooting 68.8% from the line through his first 31 games, James changed his form mid-season, with his alignment once again resembling the footwork of Kyle Korver and Ray Allen.
For some time, before the stoppage, it worked, with James going on a 13-game stretch of shooting 78.8% from the line — which was right in line with his career-best mark.
Then, the stoppage happened, and come the NBA Bubble, all changes to James’ free-throw shooting during the season became afterthoughts, as he went back to tinkering his routine on a game-to-game basis.
WHILE JAMES’ PERILS as an average free-throw shooter at best are certainly interesting, the more pressing question for Lakers fans, the team, and his coaches has to be this: what impact does James’ free-throw shooting have on his play late-in-games.
Dating back to 2016–2017, given his struggles from the line, it became clear that James favored shooting jump-shots in clutch situations more than ever. In fact, in “clutch situations” (defined as the score being within five points, in the last five minutes of games), James’ average shot distance was 19.4 feet — closer to a three-pointer than a drive to the basket.
That effect manifested itself at times during the postseason in both 2017 and 2018 when James would prefer to shoot contested jumpers to close out games instead of driving to the rim and putting himself in a “do or die” situation with free-throws.
Of course, in 2018, James had a historic playoff run that included two buzzer-beating game-winners, but at other times, like during his playoff run in 2017, his refusal to drive with the game on the line almost cost his team entire playoff games.
Given that James is in the midst of the worst free-throw shooting seasons of his career since coming to L.A., it would be prudent to look at his most recent playoff run in the NBA Bubble. Out of the “close” playoff games he played, here are some of the results:
- Game 1 against Portland: Both LeBron and Anthony Davis missed a pair of free throws late in the game: James admits that he has experienced that many times, but was surprised that Davis, one of the best free-throw shooters in the league, also came up short at the line.
- Game 2 against Denver: James settled for jump-shots for much of the fourth quarter, and ultimately resorted to setting up Anthony Davis for baskets to win the game.
- Game 4 against Denver (Conference Finals): With his team in the bonus in the fourth quarter, LeBron forced his way to the free-throw line by drawing two fouls on Jerami Grant. He finished 11/14 for the game, and his free-throw shooting helped L.A. narrowly escape with a victory.
- Game 5 against Denver: James goes 7/8 from the line, though this game was characterized by the flurry of jump-shots he made late in the game to defeat the Nuggets.
- Game 4 against Miami: In the exact scenario that would cause concern for fans of James and the Lakers, LeBron went 10/12 from the line in a close NBA Finals game against a feisty Heat team, including making multiple clutch free-throws to keep his team afloat in the fourth quarter.
- As a whole, James shot 72.0% from the line, an improvement from his regular-season averages, and only slightly-below average — though the changes to his form from 2019–2020 led to him shooting 78.8% over 13 games did not stick in the playoffs.
And there it is, the mysterious struggles of LeBron’s free-throw shooting, unpacked.
At the end of the day, James has made clutch free throws on innumerable occasions, including going 8/8 in his Game 7 against the Spurs in 2013 and 8/10 against Golden State in Game 7 of the 2016 Finals.
It’s probably too late for any remedies to be made that are drastic enough to suddenly raise James’ percentages over the course of an entire year — and of course, James’ constant tinkering has proven to be detrimental to his free-throw shooting. But, LeBron is also a master at controlling the game, and be it anecdotally or statistically, he has learned to control the game in a way that masks his biggest weakness and amplifies his biggest strengths.
Only time will tell whether his Achilles’ heel will come back to haunt him on the biggest stage, but for now, LeBron remains largely unscathed.
Sources:
“Fifteen Feet of Trouble” — ESPN
“Look: Kyrie Irving Trolled LeBron James After Missed Free Throw” — The Spun
“LeBron James’ final flaw: free throws” — ESPN
“LeBron, Cavs escape with 109–108 win over Pacers in Game 1” — AP
“LeBron James’s only Achilles heel is the free-throw line” — SI
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/j/jamesle01.html
