In 1993 71-year-old Tom Amberry shot and made 2,750 free throws in a row. Yes that is documented. Here is the truly excellent article and photo, for non-sports fans as well; it is via Jason Kottke.
Shaq attack
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Amberry … [can] shoot free throws with an accuracy of 99.5 percent…
And when he’s not on the road… he shoots 500 free throws a day – and usually makes them all.
Technical point, but these statements can’t both be true. Note that:
.995 ^ 500 = 8.1%
Which means, unless 99.5% is a bad estimate of his accuracy, he will only make all 500 shots once every 12 days or so.
Ooh, this is more interesting than I thought, I may be wrong.
It is plausible that missed free throws occur in “clumps”, i.e., you miss a shot, get frustrated, miss another shot.
Suppose that EVERY time you miss a free throw, you ALWAYS miss exactly one more “frustration shot” before returning to your “baseline” accuracy. Well, both of those shots are misses. So your accuracy, let’s say, is .995. But, your “baseline” accuracy is actually .9975.
Now
.9975 ^ 500 = 28.6%
This still does not mean that “most days” you would make all your shots. But that’s much higher than 8%. I am still skeptical, but I would be curious how to model free throw performance. Perhaps stateless is not the most appropriate.
Also, note:
.995 ^ 2750 = .000001 = .0001%
(If you tried for 100,000 days, you would have a 10% chance of having achieved it)
.9975 ^ 2750 = .001 = .1%
(If you tried for 100 days, you would have a 10% chance of having achieved it)
Also, I should add that it’s certainly not true that every person could achieve near what this guy did. Sure there’s a huge mental part, but it’s still mostly physical. Shooting a free throw doesn’t require much strength, and repeatable motion is something old men can be just as good at as young men. It’s no surprise that a 71 yo podiatrist could have immense natural skill in that area.
Shaq and Ben Wallace (and Wilt Chamberlain) are obviously very deficient in the natural skill of that repeatable motion, but that doesn’t preclude them from being great players. Having huge hands doesn’t help either.
Also underestimated is the effect of being winded and also filled with adrenaline during a game on FT%. Probably every player in the league shoots 5-15% better in a quiet gym during practice than they do during a game. I bet the best NBA shooters could hit upwards of 95% under ideal conditions.
It’s also possible that the 99.5% figure refers to performance over a longer period of time, e.g. when he started shooting as a regular pastime, whereas the “usually” all 500 refers to a probability applicable to the present.
Although, you can’t go wrong with sloppy journalism as a default hypothesis.
This is where some prior information would be good, especially when we have so much detailed information about free throw statistics. Maybe the Bayesian are on to something here . . .
What does “caret” mean in the math you’ve got here? In my world, it means “bitwise exclusive or”, which doesn’t apply to floating point numbers
Call me naive, but I reckon that the “secrets” mentioned in the article are bunk. Surely the key thing is practising for 500 shots a day?
Agreed.
The question is whether they are independent events, as mk has mentioned more than once. The answer is almost certainly no, but then the question is how dependent, and we don’t know.
Obviously this guy knows what he is doing, and has mastered something a lot of professional
basketball players cannot even do. To make 2750 free throws in a row is something that no one will ever so again, and for him to do this at such an old age just goes to show that this is something that about anyone could master with the proper instruction. This man might have something out that no one else ever has.
When I first read this my thought was………….”dang that is crazy”. I have never heard of anything like that but I think that that it is also great. I think that it shows how an “average joe” can do something great just like a professional athlete. What makes it even better is that he was 71 years old when he did it. Maybe he should go and try to coach some players that cant shoot real good!!! But this is a great story and you will probably only see something like this on Ripleys Belive it or Not, but this man will go down in history now.
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