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Haywood's atrocious foul shooting and the absence of Dave Hopla

by Vanilla Gorilla on May 10, 2011 1:33 PM EDT

I've enjoyed seeing Brendan Haywood play well in these playoffs. I liked what he brought to the Wizards and appreciated that he took a professional approach toward improving his game and helping the team win (would that JaVale McGee did the same). But his problems at the free throw line really perplex me. He's been absolutely awful--it looks like randomly throwing the ball in the genreral direction of the basket would yield similar results.

I expect that folks around here remember that Haywood was not always this awful and at one point even became a pretty darn good foul shooter. In the 2007-08 season, Haywood shot .735 from the line (and 80% during the playoffs)--very solid numbers for a big man. This year: .362 in the regular season and 30% in the postseason. Like many other players, Haywood's bad foul shooting is hurting the rest of his offense -- he generally avoids shooting for fear of being fouled, and when he does have a scoring opportunity, he rushes it to avoid getting fouled. Despite this, he's been pretty productive for Dallas and has provided some solid minutes as Tyson Chandler's backup. But he'd be WAYYYY more valuable (and likely would see more time) if he could make a dang free throw.

Haywood gave a lot of credit for his improvement in 2007-08 to Dave Hopla, who the Wizards had hired as a full-time shooting coach. After the Wiz let Hopla go, Haywood started his regression as a shooter and hasn't been above .620 from the foul line any season since then. The Mavs have a reputation for being willing to pay for experts to help their players, so I would be surprised to find that they don't have a designated shooting coach working closely with Haywood, but clearly the results are not there. If Mark Cuban reads FanPosts on Wizards blogs, perhaps he will look into getting Hopla down to Dallas to help Haywood out.

This represents the view of the user who wrote the FanPost, and not the entire Bullets Forever community. We're a place of many opinions, not just one.

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I was wondering the same thing...

I watched his shooting form in Game 4 against the Lakers and thought, “That’s not his FT shooting form while on the Wiz.”

It’s clearly about the mechanics for him and BTH has always been a player who struggled in mental confidence, so yeah they need to get Hopla in there ASAP this summer haha.

That is of course, unless they win the whole dang thing and they don’t care.

by jsuh0 on May 10, 2011 5:54 PM EDT reply actions

i never understand how players that play the game professionally cant improve their FT shooting

Howard is always complaining about fouls while the simplest way to get people stop fouling you so often is MAKING YOUR FT’S!!

"I'll be lounging on the couch, just chillin in my snuggie, klick to MTV so they can teach my how to douggie" (Buno Mars, The lazy song)

by Dutch Hoopfan on May 10, 2011 6:21 PM EDT up reply actions

Exactly

If Haywood can’t get Hopla, he can ask some of the better free throw shooters on the Mavs to see what they do. The 2008-2009 season really hurt his progress on free throw shooting.

by thewiz06 on May 11, 2011 12:06 AM EDT up reply actions

Any sense about what his contract terms were?

He raised the team FT percentage by almost 2 percentage points above the typical season average — he also did wonders for Toronto. In the Wizards case, his presence likely translated to an increase of 1 point a game (e.g. difference between shooting 76 percent as a team on 24 FT attempts per game and 78 percent). That might not seem like much, but when you consider overtime games and games decided by 1 point that increase in scoring is significant — it means extra wins.

How much would an extra 3 to 5 wins a year be worth? $200K? $300K? $1 million? Considering that the Wizards shot 74.5 percent on FT as a team this year he could definitely help the Wizards — never mind Brendan Haywood. Toronto also saw a big jump in FG percentage and 3 point shooting in the year that he was a team consultant. Sometimes its hard to tell how much of an impact any one coach has, but the results seem pretty convincing.

by Vegas010 on May 11, 2011 1:30 AM EDT reply actions