Players have improved, but not at free-throws

[stuart]

The New York Times has an article on how, in the last 50 years, free-throw percentages have not improved... link

For Free Throws, 50 Years of Practice Is No Help
CEDAR CITY, Utah — Basketball in the United States has changed in myriad ways over the decades, from flat-footed set shots to dunks, from crotch-hugging uniforms to baggy knee-length shorts, from the dominance of American players to the recent infusion of international stars.
But one thing has remained remarkably constant: the rate at which players make free throws.

Since the mid-1960s, college men’s players have made about 69 percent of free throws, the unguarded 15-foot, 1-point shot awarded after a foul. In 1965, the rate was 69 percent. This season, as teams scramble for bids to the N.C.A.A. tournament, it was 68.8. It has dropped as low as 67.1 but never topped 70.

In the National Basketball Association, the average has been roughly 75 percent for more than 50 years. Players in college women’s basketball and the W.N.B.A. reached similar plateaus — about equal to the men — and stuck there.

The general expectation in sports is that performance improves over time. Future athletes will surely be faster, throw farther, jump higher. But free-throw shooting represents a stubbornly peculiar athletic endeavor. As a group, players have not gotten better. Nor have they become worse.

Aksing this question out loud - what is the overall free-throw percentages for the Euroleague, CBA, NBL, etc. over the last several seasons... wonder if there is anything to it (and if other leagues shoot better and by how much)?

Stuart

[Lewis]

wonder how a player nowadays would do throwing like that

[damelo]

I remember an article few years ago in French magazine saying that percentages were more or less the same for the leagues coming from NBA(71%about) to pro A(71% too) or Nationale 1(67% about), the French third division.

They said the matter was mainly psychologic at that level.

[LuDux]

Lithuanians always were conservative people