It was April 1 and the discovery smacked of an April Fool's Joke. I was also drinking quite a bit (drinking and blogging, sometimes simultaneously, are the only two things I do during snowstorms which, yes, we had on April 1 and no, not a joke). But I checked the numbers again during proofreading and there he was, still way high on up there in the rankings.
Why was this a surprise to me?
And yet, the numbers never lie. Well, OK, maybe the numbers do lie, sometimes, but on the continuum of numbers to accept at face value, free-throw percentage is way over on the 'most truthful' end. This is because the free throw is basketball's only dead-ball play. Therefore, the free throw cleanly measures every player's performance at a specific skill without influence from unrelated factors lying beyond a player's control.
Another way to put it is if a player finishes the season as the top percentage free throw shooter in the league, it's not because the coach ran plays for him, his teammates created easy shots for him, or his opponents never guarded him with their best players. It is because during the eighty-two game NBA season, he was the best free throw shooter.
So, seeing Rubio's name in the top ten was a major shock. The article I linked to above is not the only evidence. I actually went on Google and found that, if I searched the names of other notoriously poor shooters along with the phrase 'worst shooter ever', the same article about Rubio kept landing in the first page of results. It was as if Google was clearing its throat each time I tried a new player- 'we know Rajon Rondo misses shots here and there and that DeAndre Jordan is no example for the little kids when it comes to the jump shot but...since you were talking WORST EVER...you meant Rubio, right?' Well, then.
It took me a short while to overcome my initial reaction and give the situation some thought. Rubio, it seemed, was a classic fit for one of my better theories about basketball: some players were good shooters, others were good at shooting.
The premise of my argument is straightforward. Some players practiced to hit any shot which might come up during a game. Usually, these players boast superior technique and their shooting form ends up looking similar to past great shooters.
Others practice to hit shots they expect to come up in a game. These players tend to train through volume and repetition. If a great shooter has unique shooting form, the player is surely in this group. I include here players who shoot much better from specific places on the floor as well.
I think the distinction is subtle but important. The idea is similar to how some students are considered 'book smart' yet lack common sense or how some musicians are great at playing from sheet music but unable to improvise. It's evident in any field where the accepted 'best way' to do something is no guarantee of the best in the field doing it the same way. Perhaps nothing summarizes the concept better than the old adage of 'do as I say, not as I do' (2).
The tricky part is in assessing how this relates to outcomes. To a complete outsider, the distinction between 'great shooter' and 'great at shooting' is impossible to make. A person who hits almost all their free throws looks like a good shooter in the same way someone who can rattle off the names of all the US presidents in alphabetical order sounds intelligent. Though the performance implies something, it is very difficult to know for sure from the example alone if the basketball player is capable of hitting other kinds of shots (or if the hypothetical student knows anything else about US history).
In some situations, the difference becomes apparent over time. Rubio, faced with many different types of shooting situations over his multi-year career, is not a great shooter. But he is obviously great at shooting free throws. He may be relying too much on mere repetition (by practicing from just the foul line) and not doing enough to develop his underlying shooting skill (by not practicing from everywhere else). The results are akin to the student who opts for rote memorization at the cost of cultivating an intuitive understanding of the subject.
Of course, the person who knows the difference best is the individual in question. And by knowing the difference, the solution derives itself. That's why I'm puzzled when people who are good in one area struggle in another. If my desk at the office was perfectly neat but my desk at home was a disorganized mess, I would think about what I did to keep organized at work and apply it to life at home.
So Ricky, come on! I know you can be a good shooter, at least, based on your free throws. But more importantly, surely YOU know you can be a good shooter based on your free throws. Whatever you did to get better at free throws, you can do to get better everywhere else. Maybe you practice more repetitions from other shooting spots like I bet your colleagues with highly defined hot/cold zones do. Or perhaps you tailor your free throw practice to emphasize broader shooting fundamentals rather than focusing on free throw specific elements.
One last bit of advice: don't let Google fool you. You probably aren't the worst shooter in NBA history, modern or otherwise. But if the search results this many years into your career are this bad, maybe it is a good time to think a little differently about your process.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. The 'worst shooter in modern NBA history' sounds ridiculous...
I will warn the interested reader that this conclusion was reached after applying a series of somewhat over-specified assumptions, the shakiest being that Rubio would stop playing at the very instant the article was published to lock in his place at the bottom of NBA history (do we talk about who was leading at halftime of championship games? We do not, correct?).
But all that aside, to be the subject of such a discussion implies that he is, at the very minimum, not a good shooter.
One thing I like about the article is the title. It gets right to the point- 'Ricky Rubio is the worst shooter in modern NBA history'. Nothing wishy-washy from our friends over at The Star Tribune!
2. When it comes to lupus, I just know it when I see it...
A lot of the TV shows I used to watch incorporated this idea. House is the best example. In one episode, Dr. House and LL Cool J traded whiskey shots until the medical maverick solved some trivial mystery. I'll assume this move is not taught by the elite medical schools.
Perhaps the key to getting on TV is in writing a pilot drawing from the 'do as I say, not as I do' concept.
