Dwight Howard is one of the more terrible free throw shooters in the NBA. Year in and year out, teams prepare to foul him numerous times per game, the same way they do to DeAndre Jordan and other big men who simply can’t shoot from the foul line. The adjustment to the “hack-a-Shaq” rule for next year will help cut down on that somewhat but not completely. So what are these big guys supposed to do when all the practice in the world doesn’t help? Well in Howard’s case he would sing Beyonce songs but clearly that didn’t work out well either.
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“I used to sing Beyoncé songs, that was my thing,” Howard said in a TrueHoop article. “I told her about it when I saw her. I said, ‘When I sing your song, I make my free throws.’ She seemed to like that.”
“Free throw shooting is all mental,” Howard said. “In practice, I don’t miss. In warm-ups, I don’t miss. When I get into a game, I hear people say, ‘He’s going to miss,’ and it gets inside my head.”
Howard is not a fan of the criticism big guys get who can’t shoot free throws when other players have their own issues with their game.
“Because of all the attention to it, our flaw has been magnified to the whole world,” Howard said. “I’ve got little kids at basketball camps telling me, ‘My dad says you suck at free throws.’ Other players have flaws, but they aren’t getting magnified the way the free throws are.”
At this stage of his career it is highly unlikely he will improve, especially if even Beyonce couldn’t help.
