00:00As he tossed his free throw underarm, the French team's fans mocked him relentlessly.
00:04But no matter how obnoxious their taunting got, the shots just kept going in, again and again and
00:10again. You can laugh all you want. If it goes in, it's another free throw, buddy.
00:13On paper, the technique Chinanu Onuwaku was using actually makes perfect sense. An underarm throw
00:19naturally gives the ball a higher arc, so when the ball comes down, it enters the hoop at a steeper
00:25angle, effectively making the opening of the rim wider for the ball to penetrate.
00:29But if the granny throw is so powerful, why don't more basketballers use it?
00:34The truth is perhaps stranger than you might think. When Rick Barry popularized the technique
00:39in the 70s, he finished his NBA career with an insane 90% free throw average, ranking him among
00:45the greatest shooters in the history of the sport. But before Rick Barry had proven the technique
00:50beyond a shadow of a doubt, Will Chamberlain famously tested it through a single season
00:54in 1962. And in doing so, he improved his terrible free throw average by 11%, and in that same season,
01:01he even scored a world record 100 points in a single game. But after that seemingly successful
01:07single-season test, Wilt didn't stick with it. He gave up on the technique in the following season,
01:12and he went back to shooting his free throws the normal way. Why? Well, he actually had an incredibly
01:18good, very scientific reason. See, Wilt believed that throwing underarm made him look like
01:24a sissy. While a typical overhand shot with the flick of his wrist looked much more masculine,
01:29even if it meant the ball didn't go in. But Wilt wasn't the only basketballer
01:34insecure about his masculinity. Many years later, when Shaquille O'Neal, one of the worst free throw
01:39shooters in the NBA, was encouraged by Rick Barry to try the technique, he refused, telling Rick,
01:44I'd rather shoot 0% than shoot underhand. I'm too cool for that. Shaq's low percentage even led to
01:49what became known as the Hacker Shaq strategy, where players would purposely foul Shaq because
01:54forcing him to take free throws that he was likely to miss was better than letting him dunk the ball.
01:59And so, to this day, despite how much more effective the granny throw technique has proven to be,
02:04most NBA players are still too scared to use it.
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