Jakob Poeltl would have had just the second twenty-burger of his career if he could have just made a few more gosh darn free throws. Not only that, but the Spurs likely would have won this game if he had just made a few more gosh darn free throws. Going 2/8 from the welfare stripe is bad enough, but missing crucial ones late is even worse.
I didn’t even realize that Poeltl was such a foul foul-shot shooter until just now. He’s been sitting around 55% on free throws for his entire career, which is entering its fourth year. How come nobody is talking about this? Is it because he generally plays so few minutes that his free-throw woes rarely effect games so drastically? I suppose that makes sense, but, then again, casual basketball fans on the internet love to dump on poor FT shooters because that’s like the one skill where an average joe could realistically be better than an NBA player, so it strikes me as odd that I haven’t heard about this until just now.
Poeltl did impact this game in plenty of positive ways (Zach LaVine is having nightmares right now even though he’s wide awake), but, man. I can’t get over those free throws. Poeltl would have had to dunk it at least eight more times before I can forgive those free throws.
(P.S. Basketball-reference now lists Poeltl as Poltl with an umlaut over the o. Should I be making that switch too? I hate umlauts because my keyboard doesn’t have an umlaut key. Austrians, please bless me with your wisdom. Australians, please bless me with your wallabies.)