Pistons’ Drummond takes missed free throws to record lows.

One of the unexpected joys of this NBA season is having the opportunity to watch history in the making.

No, no, not the Golden State Warriors and their pursuit of the 73 wins in 82 games that would make them the best-ever regular season team. That’s all good, as is the performance of Steph Curry, who has cooled off slightly from his incandescent start but figures to still shatter his own record for three-point shooting.

I refer to a rather more ignominious feat: The freethrow shooting of Detroit’s Andre Drummond, who is poised to deliver the worst season on record in the art of taking uncontested set shots 15 feet from the basket.

Drummond, the otherwise excellent 22-year-old centre, attempted 36 free throws on Wednesday night against the Houston Rockets. He made but 13 of them. The 23 misses was, yes, an NBA record. That performance ( 36 per cent) was, amazingly, better than his seasonal average, which ticked all the way up to 35.8 per cent. Later in the week, Drummond had a 3-for-5 night from the line ( a breakthrough!) that was followed by an 0-for-4 on Saturday (maybe not).

In his brief career, Drummond has quickly wrestled the title of worst free- throw shooter away from DeAndre Jordan of the Los Angeles Clippers, who appeared to have a solid lock on it.

Jordan is shooting 41 per cent from the free- throw line this season. Even as the NBA has transitioned to a league in which there is far better long-range shooting than ever before, players like Drummond and Jordan are going the opposite way on what should be far easier shots. Curry, for example, has been far more accurate (45 per cent) from three- point range than Drummond has been from the top of the key. Throw in some additional bricklayers like Houston’s Dwight Howard and Miami’s Hassan Whiteside, both of whom hover around the 50 per cent mark, and we are truly in a golden age of bad free-throw shooting.

Drummond actually has some distance to decline before he secures the record for a season- long free-throw performance. Ben Wallace, the 17-year veteran centre best known for his years in Detroit, was a 41 per cent career free-throw shooter who in 2000-01 clocked in a full season at 33.6 per cent. But Wallace was not a key part of the offence on those Pistons teams of 15 years ago. In that 33 per cent season, he attempted only three free-throws per game.

This is what makes the Drummond situation so intriguing: he is a big part of the Detroit offence, and teams have quickly figured out that forcing him to the line is a lot easier than trying to defend him in the post. In his first three seasons, Drummond averaged about four free-throw attempts per game. This season, he is shooting them at close to double that rate. He has attempted 339 free throws already this season, which is the fifth-most in the NBA. Of course, the leaders in that category, Houston’s James Harden and Toronto’s DeMar DeRozan, are actually trying to draw fouls and take free throws, as they both shoot them at a clip well over 80 per cent. For DeRozan, the free throw is a highly efficient way to score. If he makes 80 per cent of them, he will score 1.6 points every time he is sent to the line for two shots. Because he’s shooting less than 50 per cent from the field, he’s going to score closer to one point on a shot attempt in which he is not fouled. Defenders try to avoid fouling him, which is the way basketball is supposed to work.

But Drummond has turned the sport’s normal logic on its ear. He averages more than 50 per cent from the field, where most of his shots come from close range, so any possession that ends with a Drummond shot is going to average better than a point for the Pistons. Unless that shot is from the free-throw line. At his current rate, any time Drummond is granted two free throws, the Pistons will score 0.7 points.

The math is not hard to figure out: the most efficient defensive play for a Pistons opponent is to foul Drummond. Which is why teams are doing it far more often. It’s not a coincidence that Houston, the most analytically inclined team in the league, gave Drummond those 36 free- throw attempts this week. The Rockets fouled Drummond five times in nine seconds to open the third quarter, putting themselves into the penalty situation — again, not typically a desired outcome in NBA play — and ensuring the next foul would draw free throws. Then they fouled Drummond seven more times in a row. He made five of the 16 free throws to open the quarter and was pulled. ( When Houston tried the same trick to open the fourth quarter, Drummond managed to go 4-for- 6 from the line, so the Rockets backed off.) The Pistons ended up winning the game, so Houston’s strategy was not an unqualified success.

The Pistons, though, are a decent team, at least in the East, with designs on a playoff spot. It wouldn’t make a much of a promotional campaign for the NBA, but Drummond, at the free-throw line with a playoff game in the balance, would be some rather compelling television.