Shoot Your Free Throws Granny-Style! jordanmarsh6, August 19, 2021April 5, 2023 Let’s talk about Wilt Chamberlain. If you like basketball, you’ve heard of him. If you don’t like basketball and have never heard of him, don’t give up on this post just yet. Keep reading! It should be worth it. Wilt stood 7’1” and weighed 275 pounds. He played fourteen seasons, from 1959 to 1973. He was an all-star for thirteen of those seasons, he won the MVP award four times, and he won two championships. He also holds the record for the most points scored in a single game: the legendary 100-point game (more on this later). Over his entire career, he averaged 30.1 points and 22.9 rebounds per game. For those that don’t know a lot about basketball, that is insane. Whenever a player has a 30-point, 20-rebound game you inevitably hear the word “monster” from some analyst or family member or friend afterwards. This dude was a monster. Wilt started to have some knee problems relatively early in his career that forced him to retire early. The leading scorer in NBA history is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with 38,387 points. Wilt currently sits as the 7th leading scorer at 31,419 points. Kareem played twenty-one seasons, Wilt played fourteen seasons. I want to show y’all some hardcore math. Let’s assume Wilt played twenty-one seasons, just like Kareem, and let’s assume he continues his career 30.1 points-per-game average. Even back then, they played about 82 games each season. So ready for the math? 30.1 points/game * 82 games * (21 seasons (Kareem) – 14 seasons (Wilt)) = 17,278 points. Lots of assumptions built in there. Wilt probably would have lost a step towards the end and not averaged that much. He could have been injured here and there and missed some games. So take this for what it’s worth: Wilt could have scored a whopping 48,697 points over his whole career. He would have blown Kareem’s record (38,387) out of the water. Have I convinced you of his dominance? Well there was one season where Wilt was even more dominant than these stats suggest. During the 1961-1962 season, Wilt averaged 50.4 points per game. A nice, tidy, casual, 50 points a game. Again, this is literally absurd. What happened that year? Well, he shot his free throws underhanded (or “granny-style”). In every year before that one, and every year after, Wilt shot overhanded like everyone else (except Jerry West). His free throw percentages for all of those “overhanded” years were around 40-50%; while the year he shot underhanded his percentages climbed to around 60%. That small 10% boost in free throw percentage had him averaging 20 more points a game than he was accustomed to. In fact, remember how I told you about his 100-point game? He shot 28-32 from the free throw line (87-ish%) in that one game. How did he shoot his free throws in that game? Under-handed. It begs the question: why did he stop? According to his biography, he said, “I felt silly, like a sissy, shooting underhanded. I know I was wrong. I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way. Even now the best one in the NBA, Rick Barry, shoots underhanded. I just couldn’t do it.” When we evaluate what it is that makes us to what we do, it’s also critical to evaluate the things that stop us from doing what we want to do. Wilt Chamberlain’s free throws are a case study in not doing what we know we should. In my last post I talked exclusively about involving other people in your goals so you can feel accountable to them; in the same breath, that can be difficult because sometimes we feel “silly” trying to do extraordinary things. Don’t worry about looking silly. Keep shooting your free throws Granny-Style! Self Improvement