HANOVER, Md. — According to the experts, the problem was that Shaquille O’Neal broke his wrist as a child and it never healed properly. Or that he didn’t practice enough. That’s what Dave Hopla, who has worked as a shooting coach for the Detroit Pistons and now runs clinics around the country teaching the art of shooting, told me.
“He had a very flat shot, he didn’t get the ball up in the air and he had the ball sitting on his fingertips and not on his fingerpads,” he said. His elbow, he pointed out, was always out.
There were the theories about the yips, the theories that his hands were too big (which is a little ridiculous when you think about it because lots of professional basketball players have just fine free throw shots and big hands).
But O’Neal said its none of that. See, according to O’Neal, it was just a divine intervention.
“The theory is, it was the man way upstairs’ way of keeping me humble,” he said. “Seriously. Because the way I played, the way I made everyone else around me better, all of the publicity I was doing — imagine if I was doing that and had shot 90% from the free throw line. I would have been arrogant. I’d probably be so arrogant. So it was just his way of saying ‘hey, buddy, you’re just like everybody else.'”
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O’Neal was revisiting the topic of his free throws because he was challenged to a free throw contest by David Cordish, the chairman of the Cordish Companies, at his casino in a town halfway between Baltimore and Washington DC. O’Neal said he agreed to do it because Cordish was persistent in his tweets to him and he recognized his name from the real estate market.
He seemed absolutely prepared to lose to a man 32 years his senior with no NBA experience on his resume. He didn’t practice for this contest, he said.
“We want to give people something to talk about. It would be pretty cool, if I got beat by a 77-year-old,” he said. “That would be a great story. We want to compete, I’m not going to just give to him. So hopefully I make some. If I don’t, I don’t.”
(In the end, the two tied, each making six free throws a piece).
But contrary to Hopla’s assessment, O’Neal says he did practice when he was in the league. He practiced a lot.
“I tried to make 200 a day,” he said. “And then when I got really big time and was able to build gyms in my house, I shot all the time. But there’s a difference between playing craps at your house with your boys and going to Mr. Cordish’s casino and playing craps. When I’m by myself I shoot like Steve Kerr. But it’s just something about when I’m in a game, there’s pressure, I just tighten up.”
Has he ever seen a sports psychologist about that?
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe in that.”
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O’Neal’s best free throw shooting season was 2002-03, when he made just over 62% of the 14.8 free throws he attempted per game. The next year, inexplicably, it fell to 49% before bottoming out to a career low of 42% in the 2006-07 season.
“I was probably in a more concentrating mode,” he said, when asked what changed after the 2002-03 season. “I have ADHD. I do. My mind’s all over the place, my mind’s all over the place because I want to be as successful as people I admire.
“I want to be like him,” he continued, pointing to Cordish, who interjected to point to Shaq and say “I want to be like him.”
“I want to be like Bill Gates. I want to be like Jeff Bezos,” O’Neal continued. “So I’m always working and trying to do different things. So if I miss, and we’re up 10, it doesn’t matter.”
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He insists that he made the free throw shots when they counted, but in the final championship run of his career with Miami he shot a dismal 37.4% in the playoffs. He had a strategy though, for the moments when it did matter.
“I would always try to find a kid (in the stands) and I’m looking at (the) kid and I say ‘oh, he believes in me,'” he said. “And then my confidence goes up. On the road, that was hard … so you have to think of something else.
“But like in LA, I took my three dribbles, I’m just looking up and I see a kid and I’m like ‘OK, little baby watch this.'”
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