Barry, dad back more ‘granny’ free throws

N.C. State professor finds advantages to underhand method.

When Florida guard Canyon Barry began shooting free throws underhanded as a junior in high school, he knew he was inviting ridicule.

His father, the basketball Hall of Famer Rick Barry, had perfected the form in the 1960s and 1970s when, during 14 seasons in the American Basketball Association and the NBA, he made 89.3 percent of his free throws.

Still, despite his father’s success, and his years advocating the style, the technique dismissively known as “granny style” had all but disappeared. Canyon Barry knew all this when he made the switch. He knew the mockery he could expect, the grief he would endure at road games. He knew that every time he missed a free throw, he would hear about it, and his father. (One of his favorite taunts was, “You’re adopted!”)

Barry took the ribbing in stride. In fact, he said, it motivated him to polish his technique, to prove that what his father had been preaching for so long actually worked.

Although Barry shot better than 72 percent from the free-throw line as a freshman and sophomore at the College of Charleston, he said he did not feel comfortable shooting underhanded until last season, when he made 84.5 percent of his free throws. This season, his first at Florida, Barry has connected on 90 percent of his attempts.

“The repetition has kicked in to where I feel like every time I step to the line, I should be making both of them,” said Barry, who is averaging 13.4 points a game for the 15th-ranked Gators (20-5). “You kind of get mad at yourself every time you miss one now.”

Rick Barry’s four older sons, all of whom also played for major Division I schools, shot free throws the conventional way, which he said did not bother him. After all, they each made more than 73 percent of their attempts in college. Two of his sons, Jon and Brent, shot better than 82 percent during their own long NBA careers.

Canyon Barry remains an outlier, but he is no longer alone. Rick Barry said he was encouraged to see the Houston Rockets rookie Chinanu Onuaku make two free throws underhanded Dec. 26, the first time an NBA player had attempted an underhanded shot in years.

But Onuaku, who began shooting underhanded last season at the University of Louisville, has appeared in only two games with the Rockets.

The technique has long inspired mockery. Rick Barry said that when he began shooting free throws underhanded in the late 1950s, opposing fans made fun of him. Many female players used to shoot underhanded, he said, so fans would ridicule male players if they also shot that way.

What Rick Barry does not understand is why players today who shoot under 60 percent on their free throws do not at least try the technique. When his father introduced him to the underhand shot as a child, Barry initially balked at the idea. He finally switched during his high school years in New Jersey, and he has not stopped preaching the positives of the shot since then.

Barry mentioned Los Angeles Clippers center DeAndre Jordan, Atlanta Hawks center Dwight Howard and Detroit Pistons center Andre Drummond as three players who could benefit from the underhand technique. And he places part of the blame for their unwillingness to try something — or anything — else on coaches and executives unwilling to force them to do so.

“Why should a player be able to tell his boss, the people who are paying him multimillions of dollars, that he’s not willing to try to do something to make himself better, which is going to make the team better?” Barry said.

Canyon Barry, his father proudly boasts, put aside any concerns about aesthetics and reactions and dove in to the subject. Canyon, who majored in physics and minored in math at the College of Charleston and is now taking graduate courses in nuclear engineering at Florida, said he even has read papers on free-throw shooting published in scientific journals. In doing so, he came across the work of Larry Silverberg, a professor in North Carolina State’s mechanical and aerospace engineering department.

Silverberg found that releasing the ball above the head increases the chance of making shots compared with shooting underhanded — if players have the same consistency with both techniques. However, he said, the conventional overhead shot is more complicated, has a higher margin of error and requires players to move their knees, elbows, wrists and other body parts in sync.

“The beauty of the underhand shot is that the underhand shot is a smooth motion, and it’s easier to become consistent with it if you want to change your habits,” Silverberg said.

He added: “If the person is maybe a 40, 50 percent shooter in the free throw, changing to an underhand can make a lot of sense. The underhand has that advantage that it’s not a bad option for a coach with a player who is really a bad shooter.”

And yet, it remains almost impossible to sell the shot as a serious option. Canyon and Rick Barry have reached out to a few NBA players asking if they would like to learn to shoot underhanded and possibly use the technique in games.

So far, they have had no takers.

“I don’t know whether it’s their egos or they’re just not willing to change,” Canyon Barry said. “It’s crazy.”

RON IRBY / ASSOCIATED PRESS Canyon Barry has made 90 percent of his underhand freethrow tries as a Gator. His dad, Hall of Famer Rick Barry, made 89.3 percent of free throws.