My Post-Christmas Swish
Yesterday, I was at first concerned a crowded court would hamper my pursuit of a personal athletic milestone. Instead, I embraced being in the middle of my own Multi-Generational Basketball Sandwich.
“Set goals, keep score, break records. Anything else is just exercise.”
Seventeen years ago, I met a man named George E. Hood who not only introduced me to those words but embodied them from head to toe.
At the time, I had just begun providing public relations support for a club where George began setting ultra-endurance Guinness World Records.
We both achieved significant success. The Associated Press, Sports Illustrated, Chicago television stations, as well as other regional, national and foreign media devoted coverage to his remarkable feat of pedaling a stationary bike for nearly four days straight.
And we both had setbacks: George’s record was not certified by Guinness because of a technicality, while I had my share of media rejection. The most memorable was a terse all-caps demand from renowned sportswriter Rick Reilly that I stop updating him on George’s progress.
The experience galvanized George to become a record-breaking machine not only in spin cycling, but the abdominal plank.
And it reinforced the truth that success and failure are interwoven–you can’t get to success without daring to fail. On a personal level, my interactions with George also inspired me to apply his goalsetting, scorekeeping, record-breaking principles.
Already a basketball junkie, I decided to begin keeping tabs on my ambidextrous free-throw shooting.
Quirky, to be sure, but not unique—as my profile three months ago of Tom Steury indicates. I also had the foresight to recognize that this was an endeavor I could continue for a long time, beyond my days of pickup or church league competition. It requires no leaping or sudden moves and I’ve yet to get elbowed in the face retrieving any of my shots.
Since March 5, 2007 (when I made 19 of 25, or 76%, lefty, and 16 of 25, or 64%, righty), I have tracked 178,353 free throw attempts—78,353 lefty and exactly 100,000 righty.
It has been as much a mental and spiritual exercise as a physical one—a chance to retreat from day-to-day worries and strive to achieve a state of flow. I thoroughly enjoy those times when everything is in perfect harmony—my mind, my body, my form sending the basketball precisely 15 feet into a perfect swish with a backspin that returns the ball to me on a few bounces.
Most of the time, I start with one hand, take as many shots as time permits, then shift to the other hand. Rarely do I take the same number of shots with each hand. There’s no grand rhyme or reason to it.
Along the way, I’ve paid attention to the cumulative numbers as they approach various milestones. Three years ago, three days after Christmas, it was my 100,000th overall attempt—both lefty and righty combined. (My son, Zach, shot the video below while my daughter, Maggie Rose, rebounded.)
The next year, on Christmas morning 2021, I captured on video my 100,000th overall made shot—I handed my phone to a teen-aged boy who kindly obliged.
(Note: it’s coincidence that I am wearing the same shirt on both occasions, my tattered old newspaper softball shirt whose sleeves I cut about 30 years ago. And I swear that’s a different mask I am wearing below—not the same one I furtively pulled off my mouth briefly in the above video.
By the way, I don’t set out to hit all these milestones around Christmas…it has just worked out that way.)
All of which brings us to yesterday, when I went to the local gym. When I began, I was 90 attempts shy of 100,000 right-handed attempts.
As I began shooting, immediately to my left at one side hoop (and sort of in front of me, as they checked the ball with each possession) were three middle-school boys playing a game; to my right was a longtime friend, with whom I’ve shot hoops on occasion, training his 7th grade daughter as she took shots on that side hoop.
Amid this crowded, somewhat chaotic setting, I was skeptical that this would work for my 100K milestone. I was tempted to delay it in favor of a solitary outing that would resemble the vast majority of the 1,141 sessions preceding this one.
But then I realized: this is perfect—I’m in the middle of my own Multi-Generational Basketball Sandwich.
Over 40 years ago, I was just like one of those boys passionately pursuing this sport that emerged as my first athletic love, ahead of football and baseball, when I was around their age. And over the past dozen or so years, I have been that dad helping guide my daughter (and son) as they developed their games.
Besides, on a practical level, if I was the only one in the gym, it would be pretty hard to capture video of this cosmically insignificant yet personally historic moment. So, after a 25-of-30 lefty warm-up, I shifted to my right hand.
I started out a bit shaky, missing nine of my first 51, then made 33 in a row before my next miss. As the video below began, I had made 77 of 88, bringing me to 84,892-of-99,998 righty since I started keeping score.
Did I succeed in making them both? Or did I fail—that necessary path to success?
Only one way to find out…play the 14-second video below.1
And remember: “Set goals, keep score, break records. Anything else is just exercise.”2
Thank you, Katana, for the videography! As I waded through my Excel spreadsheet to count how many free-throw sessions I’ve had, this note from my very brief May 2, 2009 session (9 of 10 lefty, 4 of 5 righty) caught my eye: “During Katana’s sixth birthday party.”
For those on the edge of their seats, here are my overall stats:
Lefty: 65,914 of 78,353 (84.1%)
Righty: 84,894 of 100,000 (84.9%)
Total: 150,808 of 178,353 (84.6%)
Every time I shoot, my goal is to make 90% with both hands—something I’ve managed to do 14 times in 95 sessions so far this year.
Coming Saturday: a review of the 10 most popular columns from The Inside Edge in 2023.
You must be the Zen master of free throws. Let the nothingness into your shots, as they say. Nice work on the George Hood story. You made him famous for at least 15 minutes.
Have you read the actual "Flow" book? A book of some significance to me. I tend to think of "Flow" as one's highest state, one's calling, what one does best, not something on the mindless side, like shooting free throws. But the author does take some time talking about routine jobs, and how you can make them meaningful. The philosophy is really about living each moment to its fullest.
If I've thought once about what it is that makes a game of catch so satisfying, I've thought about it 100 times. We're sort of in awe of ourselves, I guess. The skill is so simple yet in a way seems incredible, that we automatically do the calculations and then translate them into action. The idea of flow there is to get out of your own way. In a way, we are own highest calling, no matter what we do.
So your career RH pct is less than one percent better than your LH pct? Is there a confound there? Unequal division in shots by hand through the years? Or has your relative performance with your right hand improved? I note that, in the chart you supplied from your last 10 sessions, you did better with your right hand on 8 of 10 occasions. You also said in an earlier post that you were over 90% RH on the year (compared to your 85% career rate RH). I think as a high schooler you shot free throws left-handed, which would go with improving more with your right hand.
There are so many opportunities for experimentation here, although I don't know how many of them would be interesting. Like, did the masks affect performance? Hard not to realize that one has one on. Maybe they help, I don't know. The problem with the experiments is that they're not blind, so psychology enters in. You know what experiment you're doing.