Sports Science Isn't Science

At least not when it comes to basketball.

The other day I found this video via Ball Don't Lie's 10-Man Rotation.



It was a feature trying to debunk the idea that Shaq's poor free throw percentage was due to his height and the size of his hands. The feature brought in Lakers' guard Sasha Vujacic and had him shoot a bunch of free throws, and then tried to distract him while he's shooting. Vujacic, for what it's worth, is a good free-throw shooter (career 88%), and naturally was sinking anywhere between 8 of 10 to 10 of 10 freethrows. To "simulate" Shaq-like conditions, the guys on the show give Vujacic stilts (the equivalent of 6 inch tin cans tied to his feet) and rubber gloves (basically) the size of Shaq's hands. Then they blindfold Vujacic, and he still sinks 8 of 10 free throws. Myth of size and height obviously debunked, right? Wrong.

If you carefully watch Vujacic shooting the free throws with the gloves, you'll notice that the gloves flop around a lot on his release because his hands obviously don't fit the glove. Now, I'm not saying by any means that Shaq's supposed to be a great free throw shooter if the hoop were 6 inches higher and the ball twice as large, I mean, his form is horrible. However, the simulation run on Sports Science does nothing to really simulate the conditions Shaq shoots free throws under. Firstly, the stilts, while they raise Vujacic to Shaq's height, don't really simulate what Shaq's body experiences when he's shooting a free throw. As you see with good free thow shooters, the form encompasses the entire body, while there is a change from the different height you shoot the ball at, it's not necessarily the most accurate emulation, though perhaps, not much can be done with that.

My biggest beef with the experiment is the hands. Obviously if you make Shaq sized gloves, and put any other basketball player's hands into them, they're not going to fit, there's going to (generally) be a lot of space between where a normal (in this case Vujacic's) basketball player's hands end and where Shaq's end. Therefore, when Vujacic shoots the ball, the ball is still resting on his hand, so he shoots it like he would normally shoot the ball, there's just a big rubber glove between the ball and his hand. However, the way the ball rests and the release are all the same as if he shot the ball from his own hands. I mean, if I tie a piece of paper onto my hand because Shaq's hand is the size of the same as that piece of paper, and hold the ball, do I know what it's like for Shaq to hold a basketball? While height may not be a huge factor (Pau Gasol is about the same height and a much better free throw shooter and Yao Ming is taller and also a much better shooter), it doesn't necessarily take into account hand size and strength. I can't say how big Shaq's hands are for sure but I would imagine that if your hands really were as big as Shaq's, then you might have problems shooting a ball. The more accurate test would have been to shrink the hoop and the ball to a size where Sasha Vujacic would have been the equivalent of Shaq on the court, then see if that affects it. Shaq may not be a great free throw shooter, even if he were smaller, but nonetheless, this video does nothing to debunk his normal excuse of size.

From my experience (I'm 6-0 and can kind of palm a basketball) it's harder to shoot a foam nerf ball about the size of a softball on a 7 foot nerf hoop than it is to shoot an NBA size regulation basketball on a 10 foot hoop. Maybe it makes a difference. Either way, the video does nothing except validate that Vujacic can shoot free throws in circus situations. So if you want to win a stuffed animal from a carnival, bring Sasha with you.