What is Shaquille O’Neal's free-throw percentage? Taking a closer look
NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal was one of the most dominant players in the league throughout most of his glittering 19-year career. This came as Shaq used his size and strength to regularly punish his opponents in the paint.
However, the big man infamously had one fatal flaw that severely hindered his game at times. That was his inability to hit free throws at a consistent rate.
For his career, Shaq shot just 52.7% on 9.3 free-throw attempts per game in the regular season. His shooting efficiency also dropped to just 50.4% on 10.7 attempts per game in the playoffs.
In total, the Big Aristotle shot just 5,935-for-11,252 from the free-throw line in the regular season. This means that Shaq missed 5,317 free throws. Furthermore, he shot just 1,168-for-2,317 from the line in the playoffs, with 1,149 misses.
That means Shaq left a combined 6,466 points on the table in the regular season and playoffs. Most would agree that it’s hard to fathom how a professional basketball player could miss this many free throws.
However, even with his shortcomings, the Big Diesel still sits eighth on the NBA’s all-time regular season scoring list at 28,596 career points. He also ranks fifth in all-time playoff points at 5,250.
Shaquille O’Neal on the reason for his poor free-throw shooting
Shaq was never able to make a notable improvement to his free-throw shooting over his career. He peaked at 62.2% in the 2002-03 NBA season with the LA Lakers and bottomed out at 42.2% with the Miami Heat in the 2006-07 season.
However, according to Shaq, his poor free-throw shooting was necessary. This comes as he once said it was God’s way of keeping him humble and preventing him from becoming too dominant:
“The theory is, it was the man way upstairs’ way of keeping me humble,” the four-time champion 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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