here it is. the article we've all been waiting for. https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...ows930p:homepage/story&utm_term=.2727c9daf53e ‘Granny’ shot master Rick Barry is glad someone had the guts to bring it back to the NBA By Adam Kilgore December 27 at 6:24 PM In the waning minutes of a blowout victory Monday night, a largely unknown rookie unleashed a specific brand of momentousness. Making his National Basketball Association debut, Chinanu Onuaku of the Houston Rockets drew a shooting foul and stepped to the free throw line, typically the blandest portion of a game. Except Onuaku held the ball at his waist with both hands and hoisted the ball at the hoop in an underhand motion, his arms spreading apart. Teammates cheered and pointed on the bench, stars made rapt during a walkover. What remained of the Toyota Center crowd erupted. They had witnessed the return of the “Granny-style” free throw, a relic unseen at the sport’s highest level in decades. Onuaku, a 6-foot-9 20-year-old from Upper Marlboro, Md., outside Washington, had broken a stigma, or at least shown he would not be the victim of one. Despite evidence it can improve free throw shooting, especially for big men, the form has remained foreign from the NBA since Hall of Famer Rick Barry retired in 1980. Players uniformly resisted it, afraid of looking foolish, standing out as childish or unmanly. Or at least they had until Onuaku made his debut Monday night and made both free throws he attempted, shooting them underhand. Barry himself had studied Onuaku since last year, when Onuaku switched to shooting underhand as a college sophomore. Barry appreciates Onuaku’s commitment to improve in the face of possible derision. The greatest Granny-style shooter of all time was less charitable about Onuaku’s form. “I admire the fact he was willing to try something different,” Barry said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “Unfortunately, his technique leaves a lot to be desired.” As a freshman at Louisville, Onuaku made 46.7 percent of his free throws. After the season, Louisville Coach Rick Pitino showed him video of Barry shooting underhanded and suggested he copy Barry’s technique. Onuaku debuted the form in Greece, while playing in an international under-19 tournament for Team USA, to snickering, bewildered teammates. When he returned to Louisville as a sophomore, his percentage rose to 58.9 percent. “I don’t really care what people think,” Onuaku told Sports Illustrated last year. “I know they’re going to make fun of me. I just brush it off. It’s all about getting better.” The Rockets selected Onuaku in the second round of June’s draft. He spent the season’s first two months with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, Houston’s NBA Development League affiliate, where he has shot 67.4 percent from the foul line — more than a 20 percent leap from his freshman season. Foul shots have vexed many of basketball’s greatest big men, most famously Wilt Chamberlain, who may have been the greatest. His best season came in 1961-62, at age 25, the one year he utilized the underhand technique. Chamberlain made 61.3 percent that season, including the night he sank 28 of 32 in his landmark 100-point game. The next season, he went back to shooting overhand, with a form somewhere between a drunk throwing a dart and an overgrown child hurling a rock. He converted 51.1 percent of foul shots in his career and tried everything to become better at making them overhand, even visiting a psychiatrist for a month. “After I came out of it,” Chamberlain later joked, “the psychiatrist was a better free throw shooter than I was.” But Chamberlain never reverted to the Granny-style form on a full-time basis. His reason? “I felt silly,” Chamberlain wrote in his autobiography. “Like a sissy.” The sentiment persists. Opponents intentionally foul mammoth bricklayers such as DeAndre Jordan, Andre Drummond and Dwight Howard, believing they will effectively steal a possession once the targeted player misses two free throws. Barry once tutored a poor NBA free throw shooter, whom he will not name, to shoot underhand free throws. “I had him shooting 80 to 90 in practice,” Barry said. “He never had the guts to do it when he went back to the team.” Drummond is the Detroit Pistons’ best player, but his dismal, NBA-worst free throw percentage — 35.5 percent last year — sometimes causes coaches to pull him in late-game situations. This offseason, he vowed to try anything, including virtual reality training. And yet he has refused to attempt an underhand free throw. “Everything was considered,” Pistons Coach Stan Van Gundy said. “He wasn’t as receptive. You don’t really like to do things guys aren’t receptive to.” Barry resisted, too, when his father instructed him to use the form in high school. “I can’t do that,” he told him. “They’re going to make fun of me.” But he ultimately decided that results mattered more. more at the link
What's so MANLY about playing a game for a living anyway? throwing a ball into a hoop? Running around chasing a ball? Somehow there is accepted "motion" and not accepted? Society often perplexes me, sad to see these so called "role models" perpetuate fear and bullying. Kudos to Onuaku for being a REAL superstar, putting his game before his own pride.
This is what I was saying in the "Hit some Damn Freethrows" thread. People aren't using this technique even though it might make them better at a critical part of the game because it makes them look silly. Costing a game because you're bricking free throws looks even more silly.
He'd probably demoralize him when he realizes he can't get him to shoot 80% from the line (he once claimed he could teach anyone to shoot 80% from the FT line).
I have a feeling he'll start a trend of under-handed FT shooting. The response on the internet seems to be very positive, and other players will take notice of that.
Barry seems bitter he wasn't the one to teach the person who brought his shot back to the NBA. He is also missing out on all the positive feedback.
Yeah. Shooting underhanded looks "silly", but a professional being barely able to hit 50% of an unguarded shot 15 feet from the basket doesn't look silly?
Nanu came along for this at the right time. If he had done this five years ago he wouldn't be getting praised for it, but we have hit a certain groundswell of frustration with games laden with missed free throws lately. I know most of the Barry quotes in this article were probably clipped from previous Barry / free throw shooting stories, but I do find it amusing that someone as curmudgeonly as Barry is so eager to talk to the media any time they start sniffing around the granny shot again.
