Omer Asik Tracker: (Turkey vs Serbia)
While I haven't yet watched all of the game, Omer Asik had another solid night in a Turkey win. His 11 points on 5 of 6 shooting were the second highest on the team, and he was one of only two guys to shoot efficiently from the field. Only his 1 for 10 embarrassment at the free throw line marred an otherwise excellent performance.
I typically don't worry that much about free throws. I think you can teach someone to be a 60% free throw shooter in a summer if they're willing to work at it, and Asik should be able to improve considerably in that area with some coaching. Not that 60% is other worldly, but it's good enough not to be a complete embarrassment as his present 6/24, 25% performance is.
Asik scored his points and drew his fouls playing largely out of the pick and roll tonight. On his scoring plays, Asik often leaves his picks a bit early to get a head start to the basket and create space for himself. This was effective at helping him get a shot, but it wasn't doing his guards any favors. However, since I was only watching Asik's possessions I didn't get a good view of how he runs the picks in general. He may set harder picks to pull off defenders and just not get a shot opportunity from the play.
He again showed a nice ability to catch the pass on the move in traffic and go up and attack the basket. His finishing at the rim was solid, he finished 5/6 from the field, so it couldn't be that bad, but he did miss a couple and1 opportunities where there were light fouls called that he should have finished through.
Asik also had a possession generating offense in the low post this game. He backed down his man, drew a double team and missed on a short hook while drawing a foul. It wasn't an overly noteworthy play, except it was one of maybe two or three possessions in his five games where he went into the low post and created for himself by backing someone down and then actually took the shot.
Asik scored his points and drew his fouls playing largely out of the pick and roll tonight. On his scoring plays, Asik often leaves his picks a bit early to get a head start to the basket and create space for himself. This was effective at helping him get a shot, but it wasn't doing his guards any favors. However, since I was only watching Asik's possessions I didn't get a good view of how he runs the picks in general. He may set harder picks to pull off defenders and just not get a shot opportunity from the play.
He again showed a nice ability to catch the pass on the move in traffic and go up and attack the basket. His finishing at the rim was solid, he finished 5/6 from the field, so it couldn't be that bad, but he did miss a couple and1 opportunities where there were light fouls called that he should have finished through.
Asik also had a possession generating offense in the low post this game. He backed down his man, drew a double team and missed on a short hook while drawing a foul. It wasn't an overly noteworthy play, except it was one of maybe two or three possessions in his five games where he went into the low post and created for himself by backing someone down and then actually took the shot.
2 Comments
Richard said:
Dial 411 for Rick Barry
Omer Asik shot 1 for 10 at free throw line?
Honestly, why don't these big men call Rick Barry of the famous underhanded free throw style? Didn't Barry once offer to teach free throw shooting to various big NBA centers who shot worse than 3rd graders at the charity stripe?
An abysmal free throw shooter has no shot "to lose" and much to gain from learning from Rick Barry with his 90% lifetime free throw average in the NBA. Nothing wrong with shooting underhanded free throws if it gets you to the NBA.
Doug Thonus said:
I think it makes no sense to learn to shoot free throws underhanded and am always shocked when someone suggests this. Wilt shot FTs underhanded and still stunk. Clearly shooting them that way doesn't make you great at it just due to the method itself.
The problem with learning this is that it has no practical application other than shooting FTs. If you learn to shoot them normally with good form, then you also have learned a mid range jumper.
It's not like learning to shoot under handed will be a faster process, the ball actually has to travel a farther arc and you need to have both hands on it which would create more error in two separate ways.
I would think anyone with a shooting coach and a half hour a day of shooting practice (not just ft shooting, but any shooting) should be able to hit 60% of their free throws within two months. Even if they started from square 1.
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