Free Throw Quotes

I'd shoot zero percent before I'd shoot underhanded.

I'm upset at myself. I should have had 50. I missed 13 free throws. That's unacceptable. If I want to be accepted by Wilt and Kareem and Russell I've got to start playing better than that. Right now I'm still in the class of Hakeem and David Robinson and that's not good enough for me. I want to be out there with the immortals.

I have much less confidence on the greens than I do on the court. Everybody asks like if putting is like shooting free throws. Like that six-footer for par or something like that. It has a very similar kind of mindset.

I'm not the guy whose gonna shoot 10,000 free-throws until I'm Michael Jordan - and it did happen kind of accidentally that I said, "Okay, yeah, I'll try singing."

Winning a postseason game is like winning five regular season games. There is just no feeling like it. Everything is magnified. Every free throw, turnover, shot and play.

When I concentrate and focus, they always go in, so I'm gonna continue to do that, and they will go in.

I'll hit them when it matters.

I knew I was going to make one. I wanted to make two, but the first one rattled in and rattled right out.

It's so ridiculous to see a golfer with a one foot putt and everybody is saying "Shhh" and not moving a muscle. Then we allow nineteen year-old kids to face a game-deciding free throw with seventeen thousand people yelling.

I think everything happens for a reason. With my game being the way it is, if I did shoot 80 percent, I'd be a harder person to deal with. It just keeps me humble. Just imagine me in my game shooting the same percentage that Reggie Miller shoots. I wouldn't even talk to you guys because I wouldn't have to.

I'm not the greatest long-distance shooter, I know that. But I know if I can get around that free-throw line area, a lot of times you've just got to hope I miss.

Yeah, D-Wade called me up last night and said that he saw some film of me in high school and thinks that my form then was better and that I should shoot like that. I told him I'd think about it and then my pops called and said something like that so I decided to revert back and then.

I don't think you ever want to be too settled, because once you become settled, you lose a lot of your drive. I mean, I am settled off the court; the business side of things, the papers, contracts and all of that, but there are a lot things that I need to work on, on the court, like my free-throw shooting, which has been terrible. I need to work on being more demanding in the post. My teammates are going to come to me and I just need to go out there and score in the post, which will open up things for our guards.

Probably a lack of concentration. I always hit them during practice. I just need to concentrate. Even though I should a lousy percentage, I beat a lot of teams from the line. You have to have mechanics. But see, what people don't know about my wrists is my wrists don't go all the way back. My wrists are crooked and don't go all the way back. I've been practicing and working on them. You can't do everything good.

When I was a freshman, I fooled around with shooting free throws this way: For some reason, I thought you had to stay within the top half of that free-throw circle, so I would step back to just inside the top of the circle, take off from behind the line and dunk. They outlawed that, but I wouldn't have done it in a game, anyway. I was a good free throw shooter in college." Actually he was a 62% free throw shooter, which is poor except in comparison to his 51% as a pro.

Coach (Pat) Riley told us on June 8 we'd win the title on June 20.

Flowers are the free throw of love. You're looking for the clutch three-pointer from downtown.

In this millennium that we live in, the 'Hack-a-Shaq'has proven not to work. It might work a couple games every now and then, but when it comes to the playoffs or a championship series, it doesn't work - not at all.

You aren't going to win championships unless you make layups and free throws.

(The Hack-A-Shaq is) just a way of telling me that you can't stop me. Thank you. I appreciate it.

A lot of coaches play percentages when it comes to me, but that's just a way of saying that you can't stop me.

If I had stood at the free-throw line and thought about 10 million people watching me on the other side of the camera lens, I couldn't have made anything. So I mentally tried to put myself in a familiar place. I thought about all those times I shot free throws in practice and went through the same motion, the same technique that I had used thousands of times. You forget about the outcome. You know you are doing the right things. So you relax and perform.

Reading old travel books or novels set in faraway places, spinning globes, unfolding maps, playing world music, eating in ethnic restaurants, meeting friends in cafes . . . all these things are part of never-ending travel practice, not unlike doing scales on a piano, shooting free-throws, or meditating.

Maybe it’s my own fault. Maybe I led you to believe it was easy when it wasn’t. Maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not in the gym. Maybe I made you think that every shot I took was a game winner. That my game was built on flash, and not fire. Maybe it’s my fault that you didn’t see that failure gave me strength; that my pain was my motivation. Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift, and not something I worked for every single day of my life. Maybe I destroyed the game. Or maybe you’re just making excuses.

I never think about missing a free throw. All that goes through my mind when I'm at the line is seeing the ball go through the bottom of the net.

Me having a beautiful wife and great family and friends around me, all the money I've got, all the things that I've got, a Ferrari that I just ripped the top off of and turned into a convertible, the rings I got, the two mansions on the water, a master's in criminal justice, I'm a cop, plus I look good. So me shooting 40 percent at the foul line is just God's way of saying that nobody's perfect. If I shot 90 percent from the line, it just wouldn't be right.

We changed our rules. If a player does not have some sot of altercation on or off the court once each month, we fine him...The guys that are our top four scorers, each of them will be required once every two months to appear on MTV. The guys who shoot the worst free throws over a one-month period, next time we have a TV game they're required to look into the camera and beat their chests after they make a good play.

That game was dedicated to Rick Adelman. I'm at home, in the bathroom, trying to take a dump, flipping through the channels and he's complaining (on TV) about how I'm stepping over the line. I can't even do a No. 2 in peace. I'm sitting there grunting at 12:30 at night. Can I go one day without somebody saying something negative about me?

You've got to learn the footwork, the positioning, how to box out, how to pass, how to shoot your free throws. All these things are necessary, not to be the No. 1 player in the world, but maybe you can play against him.

I can't begin to describe the amount of crap I've taken for being a lousy free-throw shooter.

I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.

We're shooting 100 percent - 60 percent from the field and 40 percent from the free-throw line.

I'm pretty fundamental when it comes to running. A basketball player doesn't practice his free throw shooting by doing slam dunks all over the place. He does it by practicing free throws. That's the attitude I take: You don't get better at running by doing everything but running. You get better by running.

To win the big games you must get to the Free Throw line, and then you must make them.

The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.

If you want Shaq to be Shaq, you've got to remember that Shaq is known for wreaking havoc offensively - 26,000-plus points without consistently making free throws. Don't have me doing something I'm not used to doing. I ain't used to being a pick-setter. Let me badda-bing, badda-bang.

I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially-fraught free throws.

The only thing I pay attention to with free throws is what a guy does in the final four minutes of a game. If you can improve players' self-esteem and confidence, get them to relax, teach visualization and routine, they will shoot as well, or better, with the pressure on.

Athletes often start life at the opposite end of the wealth and prestige spectrum, but as soon as they exhibit an unusual talent for swinging a bat or sinking a free-throw they may find that the rules have been suspended for them. They are waved through school and into the pros, and incidents of bad behavior are overlooked or covered up.

If I was able to have the game I have and shoot 80% from the line, I'd probably be an arrogant person rather than a humble one. Everything happens for a reason.

I nodded. I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin. And I liked that he had two names. I’ve always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus? Me, I was always just Hazel, univalent Hazel.

A free throw seems boring but then when you sort of dig into what's going on and the history and psychology and the social anthropology around the free throw - it's interesting.

It's part of my game, getting to the free-throw line and being aggressive. If you say that I get superstar calls or I get babied by the refs, that's just taking away from how I play. That's disrespectful to me.