Free throws are a mental thing. Any competent ball player can drain them in practice...but when the lights come on...
Also is a fatigue thing. Harder to shoot free throws when you can't get out of your legs. Playing post defense also gets pretty tiring.
And in the end, these guys should really all shut up. Figure it behind closed doors. Questioning each other in the media hasn't helped anyone, and they've been doing it for a while now. Lack of proper leadership.
Kobe should blame himself for all the defensive lapses the Lakers have. Everyone else is always having to rotate to his man because he doesn't play defense throughout the game. Looks like Kobe is always in no man's land yet nobody ever mentions it. It's always oh Kobe's a great defender yada yada yada. You have to defend the full 48 minutes.
Free Throws are an effort thing...If you dont practice on your form, release, etc, things like last night happen on the regular...DH was the sole reason they lost last night...and instead of blaming poor defense...he should have found a way to not bricking 8 Free Throws...For a guy that is close to being a 7 Footer...he should have no reason why he cant work on a form, a nice arc, and a consistent release point..Thats on Howard...make free Throws...and teams wont take advantage of this weakness...
I honestly don't know what happened to Dwight's FT shooting anyway. Before last season he was a 60% guy, not great but good enough for a center and good enough that you can't play hack-a-Dwight. I don't know if he just got lazy or what but shooting 47% from the line is inexcusable for any player IMO.
Free throws are harder to make when there is more pressure. A 50% shooter is not going to shoot 50% with the game on the line.
That doesn't explain why he went from a career 60% shooter to 50% and under. Also, there have been a lot of reports that he's working hard on it. He hired a free throw coach too this summer. I think it's more about his bad back. It can affect how you do a lot of things. Then there's probably a mental block by now.
A lot of the great centers have had free throw trouble: Wilt, Shaq, and Howard now are just the three most obvious examples. I don't think you can just say it's effort or concentration or being tired. None of those guys were money on jumpers from 15 either -- they all scored or score the *majority* of their points closer to the rim. Some big guys just suck from 15 ft, period. They just aren't good at shooting the ball from any distance. Practice and concentration can help them 5-10%, but that's about it.
It isn't as simple as averaging 1 point per possession. When teams foul Dwight every possession, it disrupts their chemistry on offense. Once they stop fouling at the 2:00 minute mark, the Lakers are done. Hack-a-Dwight is a superb rhythm-destroying move for teams against the Lakers. The other players (especially Kobe) know all they can do is throw their hands up in the air and watch Dwight struggle. It's demoralizing.
Maybe it's demoralizing to watch Kobe throw up long, low percentage 2 pointers at the end of every game. The Lakers were up by about 7 points with 6 minutes left when Kobe came back in to blow the game. He was 2-6 from then on, including 1-4 in the last minute.
That's in theory, maybe, but that's not what happened in either of these games. The Magic game they lost by allowing 30 points in the last 6 minutes. In the Rockets game, the Rockets were already on a 12-5 run when they started hacking Dwight. Kobe was just jacking shots and there was no ball movement to speak off. It saved the Rockets some time and allowed them to have more offensive possessions, but hack-a-Dwight was actually the better offense for the Lakers than 3-4 previous minutes. It's just that their defense sucked.
No. It's being taken out of context. Kobe actually said that leaving Howard in was the right move, and that its just something DH needs to push through. STill, Kobe needs to make an effort to feed Howard, because he ain't gonna be like Andrew "Gimme the ****in ball!" Bynum or Shaq "I'm the center of the universe" Oneal. Having Blake AND Nash out really sucks for Howard in this respect.
Dwight is actually correct. He shot 50% on hack-a-Dwight and that should have been enough to keep the Lakers' lead. That said, as a superstar, he should man up and say, "It's on me."
well, Dwight pretty much went there after the game with his "need to move the ball" comments. But yes, Kobe has to recognize that he has a super athletic big man now who can put people into foul trouble. You just have to feed him. I don't care if Kobe 'feels it', feed the big guy, put their best players into foul trouble, it's going to open up the game the rest of the way. Asik's in foul trouble and you don't feed Dwight vs. Greg Smith? It's ridiculous.
