Over the course of LeBron James’ illustrious basketball career, he’s been striving to be a player with no weaknesses. However, among all of the amazing, one-of-a-kind skills that LeBron has, one of his weaker points has consistently been the free-throw line. Over LeBron’s 17-year NBA career, he’s never shot above 80% from the free-throw line in a season and his last two seasons have been below-average, even compared to his career average of 73.5%. 2018-19 was his worst season at the line, shooting 66.5% and this season is only marginally better at 69.3%.
However, during the nine games after the All-Star break, a small sample to be sure, James shot at his career average from the stripe. Part of that has been a change in routine. Lakers assistant coach and LeBron’s former Olympic teammate Jason Kidd says that they’ve reworked his routine, trying to get him back to his high school days, according to Sports Illustrated’s Melissa Rohlin.
As you can see, his free throws right now, he’s gone back more closer to his high school free throw and he’s shooting over 80 percent since he’s done that,” Kidd said. “He’s always searching to get better and is there a way to fix something. And that was probably one of the things in his game that he needed to work on.”
If the NBA season ever comes back, LeBron should have the opportunity to continue improving on his free-throw shooting, which has been one of the lone trouble spots in an MVP-caliber season.
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