By: Garrett Kilcer

In this post I will be rambling on about free throw attempts throughout the late 80s to today’s game. How they relate and how it has changed. I will also be talking about some stars and how their games relate to the stat.

Hook (No relation to Blues Traveler)

If you felt that my last post was too mainstream in which I talked about a highly publicized MVP race from 8 years ago, then do I have the solution for you. I wanted to dive deeper into a topic that I have mentioned before on this blog, free throws. You may ask yourself ‘Why is he hyper fixated on objectively the most boring part of the game?’ Honestly, that is a great question. Between free throws and the way the NBA schedule is constructed, you’d expect my next post to be about ‘How the NBA tip off is the single most crucial aspect of the sport.’ 

As fun as that sounds, we have real business to attend to here as free throws are a very hot button topic in NBA discourse. The league MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA), has been accused of being a ‘free throw merchant’. For those of you that are not chronically online, that would mean that he disproportionally gets to the line when compared to everyone else. 

This is not new to anyone who has watched the league for even a handful of seasons because this same criticism was tossed at Joel Embiid when he won his MVP two years ago. While I could talk about him, that would be a much different discussion all together. Given that he is a center and plays a different game than SGA. Although, I will offer one graph on the matter for all to chew on regarding Embiid before we move on to other things. 

The graph above shows the career free throws attempted per game by every NBA player since 1977 who has played at least 41 games in that season and started at least half of all the games played (The reason for this is because we will be looking at historical trends and I didn’t want bench players to throw the numbers off. If you see some things that don’t make sense in a graph, that’s probably why). As you can see, Joel Embiid holds the record for most free throws attempted per game in their career and it’s not particularly close. 

And to answer the question on all of the minds of the Superfluous Analytics diehards out there, yes, there will be graphs in the post. I know you all were starved last time so I’ve come bearing gifts today because I feel generous.

Historical Trends in FTA

Like mentioned before, free throws are a much scrutinized part of the NBA. So much so that in other leagues they are workshopping ideas that would make them a smaller part of the game. One strategy is to change all 2 shot free throws to just one shot instead and have it count for 2 points (except when there is less than 2 minutes left in the game). So obviously, this is a part of the game that is much maligned.

The graph above shows free throws attempted by all players within my dataset per season per game and we are actually trending down. Many things can be the cause for this such as the way the game is played. The game is increasingly moving outside the three point line. This graph below shows that three point attempts are at an all time high right now which would mean less players in the paint where most of the fouls occur.

Other factors that could come into play here would be that the referees have been informed to swallow the whistle more on calls. This may seem like a conspiracy but it is common knowledge that the NBA sends out a memo before the playoffs to let the players be more aggressive on the defensive end ¹so it is not outside the realm of possibility that a memo could be released for the whole season. They may deny it but it is an open secret.

Another reason that I have to mention is that defenders are better now than they used to be. As the league progresses, in any sport, it is only natural for the talent floor to be raised. A lot of people like to compare teams or players from different eras against each other but the simple fact is that teams are better now and in 20 years, they’ll be even better.

Does Size Matter?

The next thing I thought to look at was positions. If there are less free throws and more threes, then we must be seeing a lot more guard play and less play from dominant big men like Shaq, Hakeem, and Buck Williams. I broke positions down into the popular three categories big, wing, and guard. Bigs include anyone who primarily plays center or power forward. Wings play shooting guard or small forward. Guards play primarily point guard and occasionally shooting guard. Obviously there is some overlap and this is not an exact science but it works.

As you can see, starting in 2012 and onward guards and bigs hold the top two in terms of free throws attempted per game for almost every season. This matches up with the free throw graph from above where the major dip in free throws attempted started in 2012. This would make sense as around this time, the Miami Heat were popularizing starting Chris Bosh, a traditional power forward, in the center position to have an extra wing player on the court.

The graph below shows the top 10 in free throws attempted each season broken down by position.

In the late 80s and 90s, the list was always dominated by bigs but by the turn of the century, the list became a cluster of guards. This leads us to where we are today where an MVP candidate guard is second in the league in free throw attempts and people online are calling him a grifter. But is he really a grifter or just a product of his environment?

To Wing or Not to Wing?

Ok, before we get into scoring leaders and their free throw attempts I have a quick aside that I would like to bring attention to. After seeing the two graphs above it got me thinking. If the NBA is moving towards guard play evidenced by how many free throws they shoot relative to the other positions, is that change reflected in the NBA draft? It would make sense that if you see the league moving in a certain direction, you’d want to prepare yourself for the future.

So I went through the top 10 picks of every draft from 1988 to 2024 to track the positions of every player selected. Now, when you pick that high in a draft, you are mostly selecting best available. However, if the game is moving more towards guard play, they should be making a better case to be selected high. Here is that graph:

Looking at this graph, you could come to the conclusion that there are more guards being drafted high now than before. That does seem to be the case. Something that caught my eye was that the amount of wings being drafted seems to be very consistent throughout the entire graph. I thought that was odd since they did not show up much in the top 10 free throw graph. So I was looking around the data to see why that might be the case and I found something strange. 

The data I use has been sourced from basketball reference which is a pretty reliable source and the only source between themselves, ESPN, and NBA.com which tracks position by year. One reason for the wing shortage in some of this data is that wings seem to get moved around a lot. Since basketball is a much less rigid game than football, players tend to line up on different places on the court within the same game and within the same season. Case and point, Lebron’s positions by season:

So that is why the position data for wings is a little strange sometimes. They come into the league as wings but then they play a bunch of different positions and it makes them hard to track. Ok, back to the free throws.

The SGA of it All

This is the part of the post where I am going to throw a lot of graphs at you and they are all going to look pretty similar so I apologize but I will try to make them as interesting as possible while explaining my point. That point being, SGA is a very good scorer outside of getting to the line and he has only gotten better while getting to the line less. 

Deep breath here. Yes I just said that SGA isn’t getting to the line that much. ‘How can that be?’ I hear you shouting at your computer or let’s be honest, your phone. ‘He’s the king of the grift! I just turned on the game and he’s at the line!’

Granted, posts like these are funny. But they are overemphasizing quite a bit. (Yes I understand jokes and that overemphasizing is how they usually work but this is no laughing matter. Free throw attempts are serious business and I suggest you treat them as such.)

Let’s start with a couple of other scorers you may have heard of:

This graph, and the ones to follow, shows a player’s points per game (line) relative to their free throws attempted per game (bar). The closer the bar is to the line, the more reliant your scoring is on free throws. The graph above is for Kevin Durant (KD) where you can see, in his first 9 years while with the Oklahoma City Thunder, KD shot a lot more free throws. In his only 2 seasons scoring above 30 points per game, he shot 10 free throws a game.

Next up, James Harden:

His scoring is reliant on free throws even more so. I understand that the numbers are a little difficult to see (blame Harden for shooting the free throws not me) but he is averaging 10 or more free throws a game and not even cracking the 30 point per game mark in many seasons. 

Last we will look at Kobe:

Just like the others, his scoring peaked when he was shooting the most amount of free throws. This brings me to SGA:

He is scoring the most he ever has this season and his free throws attempted have not taken a significant rise. Two seasons before he was shooting nearly 11 free throws a game but now he is scoring 1.4 more points pergame while taking 2 less free throws. He has only gotten more efficient as a scorer. So while everyone is cracking jokes about SGA, he has just put in the work. 

Carmelo Anthony averaged 8.9 free throws attempted per game twice in his career but never cracked 30 points per game. 

Now, I watch the games and I have seen that SGA has a certain… way of playing. Sometimes he may accentuate contact that he receives from the defense in order to draw fouls and I understand that is not fun to watch for anyone. I also get that the NBA is an product that is sold and actions like that could sour the the taste of the viewer. All that being said however, I think that I have made the case that SGA, a prolific scorer even without the unsavory baiting of fouls, would still be someone worthy of the praise that he receives. 

With that out of the way, just for fun, I’ll put in Steph Curry’s graph too because… wow:

For as good as we all believe him to be, he may still be underrated.

A Kelly Tribute-ka – NBA’s Forgotten Scorer

In my first post, I claimed that free throws attempted may be a good predictor for future success in the NBA. This was because, early in their career, Giannis, AD, and Embiid all shot a lot of free throws per game. I wanted to look into that specifically and see who, throughout the NBA, was shooting a lot of free throws early in their career. The graph is below:

As you can see, the hypothesis holds true. Players that had a lot of free throws in their first and second seasons include David Robinson, Shaq, Jordan, as well as more recent success stories like Luka and Zion. Even though Zion has had a rough go at it in terms of injuries, when he’s healthy he can be one of the best players in the league.

While I was looking at this graph a name stuck out to me like a sore thumb. Kelly Tripucka? Who is Kelly Tripucka? After doing some research, I found that he played for the Pistons from 1981-86 which is about the time of the Bad Boys Pistons days. So I decided to watch the documentary to see if he was in it. Despite being their leading scorer during the beginning of the doc, he got nary a mention. He was a two time All Star with the Pistons even finishing 11th in MVP voting in just his rookie year. That was one spot behind Karem Abdul-Jabar that year. 

After his stint with the Pistons, he was traded to the Utah Jazz in exchange for Adrian Dantley. In the documentary, they explained that they needed to do the trade because they needed scoring. This was odd to me as that was Kelly’s specialty. During his time with the Pistons, he was scoring over 20 points per game, peaking at 26 points per game to go along with 4 assists and 4 rebounds. 

So were the Pistons just that one move away? Did Adrian Dantley go on and have a fantastic career with them? No, he played 2 and a half seasons with the Piston while averaging less points, rebounds, and assists than Tripucka. Dantley was ultimately traded away from the Pistons after clashing with their star player Isiah Thomas, Head Coach, and General Manager. The Pistons would go on to win the Finals that season without Dantley.

During Kelly’s time on the Jazz, his minutes played per game dropped as well as his field goal attempts. His scoring dropped below 10 points per game for the first time in his career. His appointment in Utah was short lived however as, in 1988, he was scooped up by a new expansion franchise based in Charlotte calling themselves the Hornets. 

In Charlotte, his career picked right back to where it had left off in Detroit. Tripucka averaged 22.6 points per game to lead all scorers for the Hornets becoming, for a short time, the Charlotte Hornets all time leading scorer. Kelly was quoted in saying “There is no secret why I am having a good year. I am simply getting more playing time… I’m like an old TV show that played for five years, went off air and is now back for reruns.”²

A common statement that I have seen regarding Kelly is that his defense was not great but I don’t think that is much of an issue. Personally I have seen teams deal with situations where they have a scorer that isn’t proficient on the defensive end and do well. Players like Dirk, Steph, or Magic were all bad defenders and were able to succeed. Kelly was not on the same level as those gentlemen offensively, but the point still stands that players can have success overall while only being proficient on only one side of the ball.

Why do I care? Why bring up this guy that almost no one remembers and bounced around the league? I just think that it’s ridiculous that there was a guy in the NBA in the 80s that could put up 20 a night and reliably get to the free throw line, which as we have discussed is one of the keys to being a good scorer, and no one wanted him. The Pistons traded him so that they could get a scorer. The Jazz got him, never played him, and didn’t allow him to shoot. Finally he ended up in a scenario in Charlotte where he was doomed to fail on a floundering expansion roster.

He is a man lost to time. Everyone remembers the 80s Pistons for Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer. People remember the duo of Karl Malone and John Stockon on the Jazz who took them to the Finals. Even in Charlotte, where Kelly was the top scorer, the players that are remembered from that time are Muggsy Bogues and Dell Curry. I wouldn’t say that these players do not deserve the attention they receive, because they certainly do. My motive here was to spread some awareness to a man who was overlooked everywhere he went which is something I think we can all relate to.

As always I want to credit NBA.com, ESPN.com, and basketball-reference.com with help verifying stats and articles.

Major shoutout to user “SUMITRO DATTA” over at Kaggle where I found the data set that I used for this post. I will have the link to that data below this.

Credit to Adrian Wojnarowski (who was at ESPN at the time) for his work on the ESPN article that I sited about the NBA Memo. Linked below

Lastly, credit to (I assume since there was no name on the article but his name was on the top of the paper) James Cuthbertson on his article in The Charlotte Post about Kelly Tribucka.

Kaggle Link: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/sumitrodatta/nba-aba-baa-stats?select=Player+Per+Game.csv

1. Wojnarowski, Adrian (March 9th, 1989), https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/39741326/nba-memo-says-officiating-focus-foul-hunting-contributing-factor-scoring-decline, ESPN

2. Cuthbertson, James (March 9th, 1989), https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn88063138/1989-03-09/ed-1/seq-19/#words=Tripucka+Tripucka%27s, The Charlotte Post