What’s the story with Tom Steury?
Since making his 1 millionth shot in September, my 83-year-old free-throw-shooting Godfather has picked up the pace. For the past 51 days, he's averaged nearly 500 a day.
The follow-up is a staple of good journalism, whether it’s an evolving story or a flashback years after an original piece was published.
In that spirit, today’s Inside Edge refers back and provides an update on one of my most-read pieces:
On Sept. 30th (click `Read full story’ above to check it out), I featured Tom Steury, an 83-year-old Seattle-area man. At the time, he had just made his 1 millionth free throw since December 2005, when he began tracking his efforts at the free-throw line. (That was 15 months before I started doing the same in the Chicago area.)
Back then, Tom said his next goals were boosting his overall percentage from 92.86% to 93% and making his 1,100,000th free throw.
He’s inching closer with a consistency that puts to shame my occasional forays to the free-throw line: Since October 16th, he hasn’t missed a day. That includes several days in Arizona around Thanksgiving, when he found a hoop outdoors to keep his streak rolling along.
As this column goes out to subscribers early Wednesday morning (4:15 a.m. Pacific time), I have a high level of confidence—higher than Tom’s free-throw accuracy—that he will soon extend that streak to 52 days.
Between October 16 and his session yesterday, Tom had tried precisely 25,000 free throws, or just shy of 500 per day. Of those 25,000 attempts, he’d made 23,567, for a success rate of 94.3%. While that’s down slightly from his 96% norm the past few years, it’s still good enough to improve his overall percentage since 2005—he’s gone from 92.86% to 92.89% since his milestone millionth.
Going down the rabbit hole a bit more: by comparison, I’ve tried 25,302 free throws in all of 2023. Since mid-October, I’ve had eight measly free-throw outings totaling 2,321 free throws.
Not looking for a hall pass here but over the past month I have served as a referee for seven games. That includes four games this past Saturday, a high-energy season opener of the Chicago Westside Police and Sports Conference that brought together hundreds of 8- to 14-year-olds to play hoops.1
Meanwhile, I’ve been keeping tabs on Tom’s numbers, via the Google spreadsheet that he’s given me access to. Last night, I shot him an e-mail:
“Gotta ask,” I wrote, “how is your arm/shoulder? Rest of your body?”
His reply came in at precisely midnight, Central time:
My arm/shoulder is doing fine. I think a flick of the wrist helps that. Where I am challenged right now is I am trying to attend some yoga and even Zumba classes at 425 Fitness. Talk about a fish out of water. It may be a bit much with the time I am spending at the free throw line. My streak is going to be challenged in about two weeks because they are shutting down the gym for resurfacing the floor. I am looking into other temporary shooting locations. I may be taking this to the extreme. Stay tuned. Oh, and you have my permission to write whatever you choose. You have not harmed me yet as far as I know.
Though one of Tom’s goals from two months ago was to reach 1.1 million shots, I think it might be time for him to re-set that target to 2 million. By my calculations, if he makes 95% of his free throws and tries 500 a day, he’ll get there in under six years.
Another development since my latest Steury story was a Seattle television station, Fox 13, aired a segment on his feat. It includes footage from the day he made his 1 millionth free throw; to see the 4 1/2-minute True Northwest clip—it’s quite good—click on this link.
If you’ve been wondering what’s up with my referee uniform that’s been part of my Substack thumbnail bio…well, now you know.
Funny -- Tom's career rate is 92.86, which he wants to get to 93, as he moves his FTM from 1,000,000 to 1,100,000. It may be slightly more complicated, but the basic rule is that you have to increase your rate inverse to the percentage increase in sample size. So, Tom will only be increasing his sample size by 10%. To move his overall rate 0.14, he then has to increase his rate of the new sample by1.4. And, you rue his non-peak-performance 94.3 rate since the millionth-made free throw, but in fact, that's an increase of 1.4 percent. So, he's really on pace to make the goals at about the same time, and the guy is remarkably doing exactly what he needs to, whether he means to or not.
You may have to excuse more than one "reaction" comment from me to this post! (Breaking a norm).