Even at 35 years old, LeBron James is easily one of the NBA’s best players.
However, even a player as dominant as James has flaws in his game and one of the most obvious ones has been his free-throw shooting. It’s something that he has steadily declined in throughout his career and something that assistant coach Jason Kidd and the staff have helped him with this season.
James is shooting 69.7 percent from the free-throw line, which is the third-lowest percentage of his career. Last season’s 66.5 percent was a career-low. A part of this has been an inconsistent form as James is constantly tinkering with it in an attempt to find something that works for him.
Kidd has noticed this and says that James has been working tirelessly to fix this part of his game, according to Melissa Rohlin of Sports Illustrated:
“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.”
At this point in his career, James does not necessarily need to work on things like his free throw form. However, he’s always made it his goal to be the best and part of that means being the best player he can be at every part of the court.
If James can return from the NBA’s indefinite suspension with a new and improved free-throw form, it would give the Lakers just one more tool at their disposal in the 2020 NBA playoffs.
At under 70 percent, it’s safe to say that James isn’t someone the team would want shooting free throws with the game on the line. However, if he can get to that point, it would be dangerous.
