The Growth Mindset
I will be the first to admit I did not watch a ton of the Milwaukee Bucks during the regular season. So, when the playoffs started, I was captivated watching Giannis Antetokounmpo’s shoot free throws. He has been an average shooter from the line averaging 67% for his career but the number is lower in the playoffs were his career average falls to 62% and was a subpar 58% in the 2020 playoffs. During the 2021 playoffs Giannis has been all over the map with some games where he shot over 80% and some two where he missed all of his attempts. His performance from the line has varied widely game to game which suggests that it is not a technical issue but a mental one. In the early rounds of the playoffs it also affected his play, at times he looked tentative because he feared getting fouled. Make no mistake Giannis is a top five player in the league. Scoring 20 pts in the third quarter of game 2 of the finals was a great performance. He has shown tremendous heart and toughness carrying the Bucks through the first two games of the Finals on a bad knee, but I think a few tweaks to his free throw shooting would make him unstoppable.
Free throws are unique in sport because they do not take place during the run of play but they happen frequently. Technically they are not hard, shooters are unguarded 12 feet from the basket. The expectation is that most players should make them. But this is what makes them hard. The game stops and everyone in the gym is focused on the shooter, it is the only moment in a free flowing game where all the action stops. Physically the body needs to slow the heart rate and focus on the rim which can be hard when the stakes are high. Relaxing is important because when our activation level is high it makes executing a fine more skill more difficult. This is often easier said than done. Having a pre-shot routine is key, but for Giannis I think the routine is the problem.
As you can see in the video Giannis’s free throw routine is about 15-20 seconds per shot. I think that this is negatively impacting his performance. It is way too long. Imagine what would happen if this occurred at your local run or in a high school game, people would be freaking out. Though it is pretty long there is a lot to like in Giannis’s routine. Giannis starts with visualization and actually rehearses the shot. This was a big part of Steve Nash’s routine when he played, he rehearsed before every shot and was a career 90% free throw shooter, #2 in NBA history. This can be very effective especially if Giannis actually combines his rehearsal with visualization of a successful free throw. This generally takes four or five seconds and doesn’t count against the ten seconds that he has to attempt the free throw. Upon receiving the ball from the referee, he takes a centering breath which is a great way to slow his heart rate and manage his arousal level. At this point I feel that his routine goes off the rails. He dribbles the ball six times brings the ball up pauses and shoots. This process takes ten seconds. I see two things that I would encourage Giannis to change. When he is dribbling Giannis takes his eye of the rim and looks at the ball. Quiet eye theory suggests that experts move their eyes less before executing a skill. If you watch the video of Nash shooting free throws, his eyes do not leave the rim from the moment he starts his rehearsal. There are parallels to other sports and activities. The worlds best marksmen use quiet eye theory, it is also helpful for activities like putting. Giannis does not need to look at the ball as he is dribbling, the ball will return to his hand without look at it. Free throw shooting is a closed activity like shooting a rifle or bow because nothing else is taking place in the game so Quiet Eye Theory could be his friend.
I think Giannis is using some form of Quiet eye when he stops his routine and pauses. This is the second part of the routine that I would change and what I think is the main barrier to him being a more consistent and successful shooter. He stops the whole momentum of the shot and it provides time for negative self-talk to impact his performance. It is also not how he would shoot a jump shot, there is no fluid momentum within this shot. His free throw really isn’t a basketball act at all so there is no carryover from all the rest of the practice he does on his shooting. Nash goes straight from the dribble into his shooting motion which would mimic his actual shooting motion. Lastly, this allows the fans to start to impact his shot. As the playoffs have progressed fans have grown louder and louder as they feel like they are impacting Giannis’s performance. I can’t imagine how much harder this makes concentrating on the free throws. Using Quiet Eye theory once he receives the ball would help him speed up this section of the routine would make the free throw smoother and more game like and it would negate the impact of the fans and take away the time that negative self-talk can creep into his thought process. The good news for Bucks fans is that he seems to be speeding up the routine if you compare this video to the Hawks series he seems to be speeding it up which is a great start.
I know that now is not the time for a wholesale routine change but I hope that he takes some time to make changes to his routine. I think that Giannis has shown tremendous mental fortitude being able to withstand the screaming of 20,000 fans. If I switched places with Giannis my free throws would be a combo of the video below. Not pretty at all.
