After Mason Plumlee went 2-of-6 from the free throw line in this game, I thought to myself: how many people do you think have tried to correct Plumlee’s outrageous one-handed free throw form in his life?
It’s gotta be a lot of people, right? Any coach is going to look at his career 56.3% mark from the welfare stripe and weant to do something about it. By the way, Plumlee’s got the fifteenth-worst career FT% out of players who have attempted at least 1,500 FT’s. Only Andre Drummond and DeAndre Jordan are worse out of active players (although they are way worse). So Plumlee’s comical free throw mechanics aren’t just embarrassing, but they’ve resulted in a historically bad percentage.
So, back to the original question. I’m sure every NBA coach that Plumlee’s ever had has made at least a half-hearted attempt to get Plumlee to adopt a more orthodox free throw mechanic. The worst that can happen is that his percentage gets worse, but he’s already unplayable at the end of games so that wouldn’t matter too much. But Plumlee played a lot of basketball before getting to the NBA. College basketball is supposed to be all about fundamentals (that’s what college basketball fans tell me while they watch endless ball swings for the entire thirty-second shot clock), and Mike Krzyzczwzykzzzski is supposed to be a good coach, and Plumlee played at Duke for four whole years, so all those factors should have resulted in Plumlee not shooting free throws where his guide hand is purely vestigial. Next time CBB fans come at me with their “fundamentals” I’ll show them a slowed-down gif on my phone of Plumlee’s free throws.
High school, middle school, and AAU coaches aren’t necessarily known for their immense coaching skill, but most of them probably know what a proper free throw looks like. Why didn’t one of them step in and put an end to the madness? I’ll concede that it’s possible that Plumlee shot free throws like a normal person when he was younger, since his current Shaq-esque form is only possible if you have the gigantic hands of a seven-footer. A middle-schooler shooting free throws like this would probably make 10%, if that. Most of them would airball. Still, at the first sign of the emergence of Plumlee’s wonky one-handed fling, whatever coach he had at the time should have stepped in and said to him, “white people are supposed to be good at free throws”.
Not to mention Plumlee’s brothers, who are both decent free throw shooters, right? Okay, so I looked at the stats, and both Miles and Marshall suck at free throws. But I’m sure they shoot it properly. They should be clowning Mason at every opportunity.
It might be too late for Plumlee to fix this flaw in his game, but if he ever wants a shooting coach, I have high availability and low rates. My credentials? I once made 25 free throws in a row with somebody passing me the ball after makes. Boom. Take that for data.