“Only Wilt Chamberlain Has Missed More Free Throws”: How Shaquille O’Neal Was Historically Woeful at Making Free Throws

Shaquille O’Neal is considered one of the most dominant forces the NBA has ever seen. The four-time NBA Champion was a formidable center. Power, strength, footwork, scoring ability, and defense, you name it, Shaq had it.

However, there was one thing in spades that The Big Aristotle lacked, genuine free throw shooting. The man was horrible. Some would even say he couldn’t shoot a free throw to save his life. And, if that seems questionable, all one has to do is look at the stats.

Historically, O’Neal’s free throw shooting is so deplorable, that he is just one of two people to miss more than 5000 free throws. The other was the late great Wilt Chamberlain. Great company to have, but not in this particular statistic.

Shaquille O’Neal is historically bad at free throws and is second only to Wilt Chamberlain

There can be no denying, that Shaquille O’Neal is one of the greats. Some may say that he even ticked off all the boxes as a basketball player. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

As is common knowledge, Shaq was an incredibly bad free-throw shooter. In fact, he sits second on the list of players with the most missed free throws in their careers. With close to 5300 misses, he finds himself behind only one person, Wilt Chamberlain.

The most surprising part is that it all comes down to the number of attempts he had per game. The Big Diesel attempted around nine free throws a game and has a career completion percentage of just 52.7%. Now, looking back on his career, it could be safe to say he wishes he spent more time in the gym at the free-throw line.

Damn @SHAQ threw 5000+ bricks from the free throw line! 😬 pic.twitter.com/rVncVz0utL

— Nithin Joseph (@NithinWriter) April 10, 2023

To be fair to him though, it wasn’t like he was willingly drawing fouls. After all, some teams perfected a tactic known as “Hack-a-Shaq”, forcing the big fella to the line.

Shaq found himself at the free-throw line often thanks to the Hack-a-Shaq strategy

Given his penchant for missing free throws, one would assume that Shaquille O’Neal would have done everything possible to stay away from the free-throw line. Unfortunately, he had no choice when going up against the Hack-a-Shaq strategy. A strategy that gained fame thanks to Hall of Fame coach Don Nelson’s use of it on Shaq.

It certainly was a highly effective tactic. But, to the likes of O’Neal and other poor free-throw shooters, it was nothing more than a questionable and dirty trick.