Shaquille O’Neal might be the most dominant player ever, but he had one major flaw in his game; Free throw shooting. Over his 19 year career, Shaq shot only 52.7% from the line. He is statistically the fifth-worst free throw shooter in NBA history.

Shaq was a beast inside the paint and the only way to stop him was to foul him and foul him hard. However, he missed over 5300 free throws in his NBA career and is only behind Wilt on the list for free throws missed. At some points in his career, Shaq’s free throw percentage would be around 40% which is historically bad.

Teams started implementing the Hack A Shaq strategy to take advantage of his poor free-throw shooting. Sometimes, coaches would have to remove Shaq at the end of the games because of his ineffectiveness to knock down anything.

But Shaq, regardless of his struggles, never tried to change his stroke. It was minor adjustments here and there, but there were no major changes at all. Rick Barry, the Golden State Warriors legend, who had an underhand free throw stroke and is the fourth-best shooter in NBA History, suggested to Shaq that tried the underhand method. But Shaq had other plans.

“I’m Too Cool For That,” says Shaquille O’Neal

Shaq was asked why he never tried the underhand shooting technique. Shaq responded, ” Because… It’s boring… No, it’s not proven.. just because a couple of guys did it, doesn’t mean anybody can do it. I told Rick Barry Id rather shoot 0% than shoot underhand. I’m too cool for that”

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“I think it was the man upstairs’s way to just keep me humble. Cause Imagine me with the game I had shooting like Steph Curry from the free-throw line. I’d probably be a difficult man to deal with.”

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Shaq was already a difficult man to deal with without free throw shooting. It used to take 2 or 3 players to stop Shaq and more often than not, that wouldn’t be enough. If Shaq shot like Curry, then he could have been the best scorer to ever live.

How can you stop the man? He was a beast inside and the only flaw in his game was the free-throw shooting. And without that, there would have been no way that Shaq could have been stopped.

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