Rockets Dawg Pound cheering idea to mess up free throws

ITs a great idea, it is done at A&M basketball games. It works sometimes. Especially the first time in the game.

 

Actually, if you want to mess with them move in rhythm. Almost every basketball player can ignore random motion while shooting freethrows.

 

There was a good ESPN article talking about this:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hruby/051104

The Crowd Can Affect Free-Throw Shooting
A few words for everyone sitting behind the basket: Sit down. Shut up. For the love of John Wooden, lay off the Thunderstix.

Fact is, you're not making much of difference.

"The balloons, the signs, all that stuff that goes on behind the basket never bothered me much," says former NBA guard Steve Kerr, an 86.4 percent career shooter from the foul line. "The only thing I was ever distracted by was the situation."

Kerr has company. Lots of it. Last season, the 25 teams with split stats listed on NBA.com shot an average of 75.7 percent from the foul line at home and 75.3 percent away, a whopping difference of 0.4 percent. Ten squads even shot better on the road.

Guess what? All those noisemakers aren't going to make a guy miss.

All of which suggests that those oh-so-clever BRICK signs aren't exactly getting the job done.

"Just sitting there yelling, waving your arms, that doesn't work," says Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas. "It has to be something you haven't seen before."

Such as?

"When I was at Arizona, the Oregon Duck had this big smile," Arenas recalls. "He stands in the back, kicking the goal over and over. We must have missed six free throws straight because we were laughing at him."

As it turns out, Thunderstix and wiggling balloons have little effect because the brain simply blocks out random motion, like white noise on a television screen. According to this Slate.com article, fans behind the baseline would be better off moving side-to-side in unison.

Why? Confronted with a field of background motion, observers tend to believe that they are moving while the background remains still -- think of sitting on a stopped subway train while an adjacent train passes. David Whitney, a visual scientist at the University of California-Davis, has demonstrated that a field of background motion can influence hand motions, such as the flick of the wrist on a free throw.

Kerr concurs.

"The most effective one I've seen might have been at Duke, or maybe Kansas," he says. "As soon as the guy was about to shoot, the fans would all move from the right side to the left. It would create this visual of everything moving."

Put those same fans in Duck costumes? Now we're getting somewhere.

 

^yea, do something like that. move left three steps, then right three steps and then left three steps....

or do that hand thing. where your hands are in one direction, then move it to the other side.

 

what about some naked power dancers? that would mess me up.

 

ya like wavin side to side together.

 

Gilbert Arenas suggests making a player laugh. So, if you can't be seen, make the player at the FT line laugh.

 

I can't remember what school did/does it, but I remember seeing the entire section behind the goal kind of leeeeean over to one side as the player shot the ball. Not move, but actually just lean... it was hysterical. lol.

 

i think it's duke.

that actually creates an optical illusion. it looks like the basket has tilted to the opposite side of the leaning. the shooter compensates at the last second by throwing it to the side and misses.

i say we leave a flyer in those seats before every game. maybe it will catch on....


on the other hand we are already the best FT% defense in the league.