When I see some players celebrating an and-one, I think: I get that you are excited because you made the basket and are now going to the free-throw line, but why are you celebrating? You shoot below 70% from the free-throw line…

Statistically speaking, they are more likely to make it than to miss it, but still. A lot of times they miss, so all the momentum from the and-one vanishes in a second. And these players usually don’t improve during the off-season. They actually get worse. How is that even possible?

Here we will study the worst free-throw (FT) shooters in the last 5 years, taking into account the amount of FT they shoot and how accurate they are from mid-range and 3PT.

Apart from the mentioned players below, there are others with bad FT%, but they are not good at shooting from anywhere either. The best example is Zion Williamson. I didn’t add him here because he doesn’t shoot the ball from other areas of the court, so we can’t ask him to be a good FT shooter. For instance, during the 2023/24 season he played 70 games, shooting the ball 1094 times. Only 18 of those times were from mid-range.

Nevertheless, he had a 70 FT% during that season. The studied players have similar averages but can shoot the ball from other places in the court. Let’s take a look at them!

Giannis Antetokounmpo

The first player that comes to your mind regarding this stat is Giannis. And the stats back up your assumptions in this matter.

4 out of the last 5 seasons Giannis has finished top-10 in worst FT% shooting during the regular season, and the other one he was top-20. This year, he ranked last at FT% shooting in the whole NBA. Except for 2 seasons, he ranked 1st in FT attempts. Which makes you wonder, wouldn’t he be an even greater NBA player if he improved this field?

While shooting a similar amount of FT, Giannis consistently worsened his percentage year by year. Reaching his peak in 2021/22 at 72%, the next years it was closer to 65% until this year, his worst with less than 62%. And of course this is reflected in his playoffs percentages.

These percentages are not as accurate as the regular season ones because of the total attempts, in any case the data is still there and it for sure influences his performance in the post-season.

Even with Giannis reaching the 10 seconds violation almost every time he shoots a FT, it doesn’t have any (or even a negative) impact on his percentage. We are not expecting Giannis to become a 90% FT shooter, however adding some extra points in the FT line would make him an even better scorer.

For instance, this 2024/25 regular season he shot a total of 707 FT, converting 436 of them. If instead, he became a ~80% FT shooter, he would have made 566/707 – 130 more points.

His points per game would have increased from 30.4 PPG -> 32.3 PPG, almost becoming the best scorer in the NBA behind SGA’s 32.7 PPG. Some of their close games wouldn’t be as close, and they could have a better conference position than 5th, giving the Bucks benefits such as home-court advantage or a better matchup in the 1st Round of the Playoffs.

Indeed, this is all speculation and hypothesis, but practicing FTs doesn’t take any more than taking the ball and shooting from 4.5m from the backboard until you get tired of it, every day. Naturally, other variables such as the fans, the game situation and others affect the FT% too. Anyway, the crucial aspect is your own confidence in FT shooting.

As a completely unqualified opinion, I think he needs a change in his form, as that 10-seconds ritual just makes him overthink every FT. Re-adapting to a new and shorter FT routine could make him become more automatic from the line.

He has still many great years to come, and improving in this aspect would make him an even greater player.

Alperen Sengun

While Giannis shooting form change is questioned by many experts, from my point of view, Sengun’s shooting form looks smoother. It looks like a form that could make ~35% from 3PT range – sadly we can’t ask for that. Still, it’s a shooting form that I would expect to convert more than 75% from the FT line.

He has been constantly increasing his drives per game – from 3.4 his first year to 7.7 this 2024/25 season – making him shoot more FT, 3.2 FT attempts vs. 5.6 this year. In the meantime, his averages have decreased over the last two seasons, being clearly under the league average.

During game 4 of this year’s First Round, he had a clear directive of driving to the basket every possession he could. He did it 14 times in that game, earning him 10 FT. He scored his average 70%, which is not bad, with room for improvement.

With that many drives, he will get fouled more, and making extra FT would allow him to become a better scorer. Also in the clutch, where the ball might come to him and he can get to the FT line.

RJ Barrett

Barrett is one of the most special cases. He’s an all-around shooter, averaging 34.6% from 3PT with almost 5 attempts per game, and shooting almost 11 2-points per game with a 48.3%. Despite being a decent shooter, let’s look at his FT% over the last 5 years.

What surprised me the most when retrieving information for this post was the downfall from his first complete season with the Raptors. While attempting the same number of FT, his percentages went down by ~8%. Barrett’s really good at getting to the rim, but when it comes to the finishing at the rim he’s as improvable as from the FT line.

It seems that this is one of his biggest flaws. Shooting almost a 75% as he was doing during his first years is the minimum that we can ask for, while still being well below the league average in FT%.

RJ Barrett stated that one of the main reasons for the sharp drop in FT% is fatigue. He knows he had better averages other years and that he’s capable of reaching those. With that statement, RJ now has to at least match or even surpass his best FT% season. There’s a full off-season ahead where he will be able to work on them and a full NBA season next year to back up his words.

Another topic where Raptors fans were unhappy was in the clutch FTs. While the NBA’s player average in this stat was 75.4%. RJ Barrett made 66.7% of these – 16 out of 24. In some games, the Toronto Raptors missed having his star making the important points down the stretch.

After incorporating Brandon Ingram, if the Raptors want to compete this next NBA season and build a team around RJ Barrett, he will need to step up. Apart from getting into the paint as he does, he ought to work on improving his FT percentages and stop leaving points behind. Those can be of great value.

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These were the three – four if you count Zion – that I consider the worst FT shooters while still being good scorers from other spots like mid-range or even 3s. Let me know if you think I missed someone in the comments and whether you think free-throws are important or not!