Underhand free throws? Rick Barry urges Knicks’ Mitchell Robinson to make switch

After I picked up the phone and introduced myself, I had barely gotten the name Mitchell Robinson out of my mouth before Rick Barry answered the question I hadn’t even asked yet. 

“He should have switched to shooting [free throws] underhand before he broke his finger,” Barry, the 82-year-old Hall of Famer and 12-time NBA All-Star, said. 

Everything was going smoothly for the Knicks this postseason — until Robinson broke his right pinky finger. If you’re curious how that occurred, join the club. The Knicks revealed that it did not happen in a game or practice, but that’s as far as they were willing to go. When Mike Brown was asked about it recently, Knicks media relations cut in to say “we’re not going to get into specifics.” 

Robinson underwent surgery and hopes to play in the Finals against either the Thunder or Spurs. To the extent that there’s any good news for New York, that’s it. The bad news is that Robinson is an awful free-throw shooter when all his fingers are in working order — he’s hit just 13 of his 43 attempts this postseason, which comes out to an almost unfathomable 30.2% — and he now plans to wear a brace on his broken digit. You don’t have to be a doctor — of either the medical or shot variety — to know that probably won’t help his issues at the line. Of which there are many.

This brings us back to Barry. He shot 89.3% from the line in his 14-season career (1965-1980), and he did it with a unique underhand style that became one of the things he’s best known for. 

As effective as that approach was for Barry, shooting underhand has long since fallen out of fashion in the NBA. Barry doesn’t understand why. Or he does, but he doesn’t dig the reasoning behind it. He insisted that shooting underhand has “been proven scientifically by physicists” to be a superior form from the free-throw line because of how much easier it is to control the ball and the arc it creates. For those reasons, he noted it’s especially beneficial for bigger guys with larger hands who sometimes look like they might as well be shotputting a tennis ball at the rim. 

He’s positive it would help Robinson — especially with the broken pinky finger on his shooting hand and the brace he’ll be wearing.

“That [broken finger] would be nothing with the underhand free throw because all the feel and the touch comes from the other fingers,” Barry said. “You’re rolling your hands together and [the ball] rolls out with your arm swing. The pinky has nothing to do with it. It would be something he could do.”

Something he could do, sure. Something he would do is decidedly less likely, but even if Robinson was willing to attempt it, how quickly could he pick it up given that the NBA Finals start on Wednesday?

“Could he try to learn how to do it now?” Barry said. “If I showed him how to do it now, he’d have three or four days to practice it. And who knows, maybe he’d pick it up. It’s a simple technique. It’s all about the feel.”

In addition to mastering it himself, Barry also taught the approach to his son, Canyon, who used it in the G-League and international 3×3 competitions. But despite being convinced that anyone could pick it up and that it would certainly help a bad free-throw shooter like Robinson get better (or at least less bad), Barry conceded that it would be unlikely for Robinson to change from overhand to underhand a few days before the Finals. Not to mention the usual concerns that athletes tend to have about the “Granny Style” aesthetic stigma and the potential for their peers to figuratively dunk on them for trying it. The reasoning on that last part — and this will come as no surprise — annoys Barry to no end. 

“Throw your ego in the freakin’ closet,” Barry said. “It’s all about how often you can make it. Who cares what you look like? The style means nothing. It’s the results that really matter. If you make more, they’re gonna play you more. They’ll be throwing you lobs at the basket. Right now they don’t want to do that with him. He’s a liability the way he shoots. Why wouldn’t you want to get better and help your team more?”

It’s a fair question. Dr. Leah Lagos — a sports psychologist in New York who, bless her, recently attempted to explain the mentality of Knicks fans — has worked with NBA players and also did a podcast with Joe Mazzulla in which the Celtics coach explains how he uses techniques taught by Lagos to lower his stress levels. Lagos said that how athletes make decisions is sometimes determined by how they think people might perceive them. Working past that, she said, can help “harness your best skills and self.” But to do that, “they have to let go of what people think of them.” That’s good advice for anyone, but she said “blocking out the noise” is more complicated for athletes when it includes people talking about you on podcasts, social media and television. 

Gotta (under) hand it to him

Rick Barry vs. Mitchell Robinson’s free-throw history. Barry only has five more postseason FT misses on 581 more attempts.

Barry thinks he has a solution for the stigma, too. Before we said our goodbyes, he told me that he’s waiting for the day when “an owner, general manager or coach has the guts” to tell someone like Robinson that they are required to shoot underhand because “you’re hurting the team” with your current form. The way Barry thinks about it, guys like Robinson are employees making massive money. If their bosses gave them an ultimatum that they had to at least try shooting underhand, how could they refuse?

“We’re paying you millions of dollars, and you’re gonna say ‘no I’m not gonna do that?'” Barry said. “That’s insane. It doesn’t happen in the real world — that you can tell your boss no even though you’d be a better player, but you don’t want to do it because you won’t look cool. It sounds idiotic when you say that, doesn’t it? It’s hard for me to conceive that someone wouldn’t want to get better. That’s your livelihood. This is what you do for a living.”

If the Knicks or Robinson want to give it a go, Barry will be by the phone.