“Rajon Rondo needs a sports psychologist to help him get over his free throw blunders”
The headline is sure to draw anybody’s attention. If you’re not a big sports fan, it might be downright confusing. Some view psychologists as the means to solve seemingly more “important” personal existential crises or relationship problems, not someone to talk to when your shots aren’t falling down.
However, there is a field within psychology geared towards helping athletes analyze their performance, and I completely agree with the thesis of this blog post written by CelticsBlog contributor Kevin O’Connor. Rajon Rondo is a miserable 9-28 from the free throw line this season. That’s 32.1 percent. Even Shaquille O’Neal and Dwight Howard – infamous for their incompetence at the line – shoot over 50 percent from the charity stripe for their careers. Why can’t Rondo do the same?
Photo uploaded by Ben Parker to sport-kings.com
It’s an interesting question to ponder. Rondo is a career 61.5 percent and 64.7 percent foul shooter in the regular season and the playoffs, respectively. While still terrible numbers (and even worse when you consider that he’s a point guard and it’s usually big men who aren’t great free throw shooters), they are nearly twice as good as his percentage this season. What’s even more puzzling is that Rondo actually can shoot, as this 2010 video demonstrates. There he is, a 25.6 percent career three-point shooter, going shot-for-shot against career 37.7 percent three-point shooter, 88.2 percent free throw shooter, and four-time scoring champion Kevin Durant.
I think that video is cold, hard proof that O’Connor is right. In last night’s game against Chicago, Rondo had the chance to give the Celtics the lead with a minute remaining. The score was tied 102-102, and Rondo stepped to the line. What happened? He bricked the shots, of course. I hate to say it, but this surprised no one. After the game, Rondo acknowledged that he’s thinking too much about his free throws.
Therein lies the problem. I’m not going to compare to myself to a multiple-time NBA All-Star, but to present a better picture of this phenomenon; I’m going to use an example from my own life. The summer after I graduated high school, I was playing much better basketball than I ever had. Long story short, I tore my meniscus and have never been the same. During some particularly painful years, I couldn’t even play because of the pain. My love for the game wouldn’t keep me completely out of it, though, so I had to come up with a way to quench this thirst that could also let my competitive juices flow. What I ended up doing was going with a friend or two to the court and shooting 100 free throws. One of us would shoot 25, then it would be the other’s turn. We still do this occasionally, and sometimes I even do it by myself just to see how many I can make.
I have written down how many of these shots I’ve hit every time I’ve done this, and my lifetime average is about 80 percent. Although I would like to make every single one of them, I’ll take the 80 percent, because my objective is to always hit at least 20 out of 25. Even if setting this goal for myself is what keeps me motivated to shoot, the problem is that thinking about it while I’m performing the task can be extremely distracting.
Let’s say that one day, I start off 10 for 15. When that happens, I can’t help thinking, “I’ve already missed five, now I need to make 10 in a row or I won’t get to 20.” That’s pretty much the worst thing you could possibly do, because thinking about missing will only increase the chances that you actually will. In fact, one of the most common things I’ve noticed during this free throw drill – even when my friends shoot – is that when we’re hot (let’s say we’ve made about 15 consecutive shots) and miss one shot, we most likely will miss the next one as well. Why does this happen? Perhaps a sports psychologist has the answer.
I’m positive that the same thing is happening to Rajon Rondo. Granted, he’s always been a bad free throw shooter with less-than-ideal shooting mechanics, but his performance this season has been more than atrocious. I once read that external factors (such as the noise from the crowd, fatigue, and the pressure of the moment) contribute to players’ free throw percentage being about 10 percent less in games than it is in practice, and that makes sense. In fact, I bet that if Rondo and I were shooting together in a gym, he’d get better numbers than me. Considering that he’s not even making a third of his shots right now (while I routinely make about four fifths of mine), this might be hard to believe, but Rondo is a world class basketball player and I’m a half-decent weekend warrior, at best. This is precisely why his average is so embarrassing right now – millions of people who have never played a second of professional basketball are probably shooting better from the free throw line than he is.
He’s not the only one for whom this has been issue. In early 2012, a leaked photo from the Los Angeles Lakers’ practice facility perfectly illustrated this problem:
The Lakers’ free throw percentage went down an astronomical 20 percent in game situations, with Dwight Howard suffering the largest personal decline. Look at Howard’s numbers again. He can’t even make half of his shots during games, but in practice, he’s better than me!
This gives weight to the theory that guys whose free throws issues have already been documented are particularly susceptible to further decreases. I hope Rondo sees a sports psychologist before it’s too late, because the Celtics have been blowing a lot of games lately and the first month of the season has just passed.
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