6-for-20

Game Five of the Eastern Conference Finals went to the home team Pistons, which kept their season alive a little longer. There were a few aspects of the game that could be deemed "factors" in the outcome, including: increased intensity by the Pistons (nice of Ben Wallace to show up for a game), a big performance from Tayshaun Prince, 14 Miami turnovers, a pretty average game for D-Wade, and the typical "call a bunch of fouls in the first quarter so the home team can get into the bonus and shoot free throws" move that the officials have perfected this postseason. However, none of those factors come close to the only real factor in tonight's game. And that would be ...

6-for-20.

That was Miami's shooting from the free throw line. From the free throw line.

Now, I have never taken a free throw in an NBA playoff game with 19,000 people screaming at me, but I have to believe I should shoot better than 30%. My buddy Josh Stump discussed this on his blog while calling out Hubie Brown for shedding tears on behalf of Ben "The Living, Breathing Missed Free Throw" Wallace. And he's got it exactly right. How do you miss more than half of your free throws? In this case, how do you miss more than two-thirds of them!

You would think with this kind of masonry going on, that the Hack-a-Shaq was in effect. Not really. Sure, Shaq was a grisly 1-for-5 from the line, but that still leaves a 5-for-15 work of art for the rest of the team to lay claim to. For the love of James Naismith, how did this happen?

Part of the problem is that Miami lacks great shooters. Everyone knows this, but because Wade is so sick and Shaq so powerful, Miami wins a lot of games even without reliable shooters. Plus, they have a couple of streaky players that can get hot and hit some threes in 'Toine, Posey, and Jason Williams. However, take a look at their roster and find me someone that could beat Jeff Morrow in a three-point shootout. Okay, 99% of you don't know who Jeff Morrow is, but think of your buddy with the sweet jumper and insert him into the argument. Face it, Miami has plenty of good players but not a whole lot of good shooters. Wade is probably the only guy I'd consider a good shooter and he's usually pretty solid from the line and from inside the three-point arc, but even he is more scorer than shooter. And when you aren't a shooter, you have nights where you lose the feel (Steve Kerr did a great job of discussing this the other night, while talking about Leandro Barbosa). And when the whole team is comprised of shaky shooters, you might just have a night where everybody loses the feel all at once. And then it is: "Goodness sakes alive, watch your face!" (Since I cited my man Stump's blog, I felt obligated to throw a Bill Walton quote in there. Because he loves him.)

Another problem for Miami is that different players kept getting fouled. To me, free throw shooting - really any kind of shooting - is kind of like hitting a baseball. The more attempts you get, the better off you are. I remember in the NCAA Tournament, the incredibly insane and grouchy Billy Packer got absolutely fixated on the low free throw shooting percentage of Florida's sharpshooting guard Lee Humphrey. He kept mentioning Humphrey's 44% shooting for the year and offering all kinds of crazy suggestions for improvement (including my favorite: moving back to 19 feet and shooting a jumper, which apparently was supposed to be some sort of cross between Nick Van Exel and a three-point shootout). What Packer failed to notice as that Humphrey had only taken 22 attempts all year. So here was Packer, rambling on and on about Humphrey's inability to shoot free throws, meanwhile the kid finally gets a few attempts in bulk and he goes like 8-for-9 in the national semis. To go back to the baseball analogy, it is like comparing an everyday player to a pinch hitter. In almost every case, the everyday guy will have the better batting average. Part of this is probably because the everyday guy is better to start with (that is why he's playing everyday), but the other part is that you need volume attempts to produce. It takes a special type of player to get off the bench to hit once every two games. I think this applies to shooting, particularly free throws. I know that I can knock down 10, 20, maybe 30 free throws in a row standing by myself in a gym. I also know that if I get 10 free throws in an actual game (we're talking college intramurals and city leagues here, of course), I am probably going to make eight or nine. However, if I get fouled just one time? If I'm being honest, I probably go 1-for-2. Maybe not, but the point is that if you can get one trip out of the way and get the feel, the rest is gravy. For Miami, the only guys to get more than three attempts were their centers, Shaq and Zo. Not good. Wade converted an "and one" but missed twice when he finally got to the line late in the game. Haslem had a rough trip where he missed two and then he shanked another one later in the game. Payton threw up a pair of bricks. I am 100% certain that if Wade got eight attempts, he would have made five or six. If Payton got another trip to the line, he probably would have made both of them. But when you only get to the line once the whole game, it is a crap shoot.

I could go on, but there is no point in beating a dead horse here. The simple fact is that Miami lost this game at the free throw line. They didn't get a lot of calls to begin with and when they did win a trip to the line, they just gave it away. Miami is never going to be a great free throw shooting team (as evidenced by their percentages in the first four games: 67%, 67%, 87%, 60%), but they can't expect to win if they shoot under 50% from the stripe.

Game Six may very well boil down to the most elementary play in basketball: making unguarded shots from 15 feet away.

Amazing.