Set world record for free throws made

It took 12 hours and 2,750 shots for Dr. Tom Amberry, a 71-year-old retired California podiatrist, to set the world record for free throws consecutively shot and made.

Over and over, 10 bored witnesses watched his sixsecond routine — parallel feet, three bounces of the ball, bent knees, tight elbows — inside the Rossmoor Athletic Club in Seal Beach, Calif., on Nov. 15, 1993.

Amberry stopped at the 12-hour mark, but only because the gym janitors made him.

“I could have made a bunch more,” Amberry told the Orange County Register in 1995. “I was ‘in the zone,’ as the kids say.”

In the quarter century that followed, Amberry wowed David Letterman and Tom Brokaw on TV, wrote a free throw guide book, “Free Throw: 7 Steps to Success at the Free Throw Line,” and traveled the globe teaching players young and old, amateur and all-star, how to master the least sexy way to win a basketball game.

Nothing irked him more than sloppy form, poor focus and irreverence at the line.

“A free throw is a gift,” he would say. “You should take advantage of it.”

Coaches, filmmakers and journalists sought Amberry’s free throw analysis well into his 90s, and on more than one occasion he offered his critiques from the comfort of his couch, particularly during the NCAA tournament.

On March 19, amid the height of March Madness, Amberry died in California.

He was 94.

At a lanky 6 feet, 7 inches tall, he played basketball and baseball in high school and graduated in 1940.

But he was called off to World War II soon after and spent four years in the Navy. He played on a Navy basketball team.

In retirement, Amberry taught free throw clinics in all 50 U.S. states, more than 100 countries and at least five continents.

Amberry was preceded in death by his wife, Elon, and one son, Tim. He is survived by his sons, Bill, Tom and Robert; 12 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.