Free throws are back with a vengeance
A mid-season NBA officiating directive saw free throw attempts plummet, but early in 2024-25 they're back with a vengeance
If you’ve watched any of the NBA’s early-season action you’ve probably noticed that there have been a lot of free throws. Between last season and this season, four of the ten highest team single-game free throw attempt totals have come from this season. Yes, the season where teams have played a combined 82 games is already dominating the free throw attempt leaderboard in 1/30th of time. While free throws are a part of the game, they weren’t supposed to be coming this fast and furious.
One of the more fascinating developments of the 2023-24 season was an abrupt change in officiating. With offensive efficiency at an all-time high, the league office put their thumbs on the scale and asked referees “to let the kids play.” The result was an abrupt and sudden drop in free throw attempts and fouls in the middle part of the season. While the initial drop in free throw rate was discovered by boxscore hounds, interviews with league officials corroborated their findings.
Using the All-Star break as the line of demarcation, we can see just how dramatic the change was. Prior to the All-Star break, teams averaged 22.6 free throw attempts (FTA) per game for a 0.254 free throw attempt rate (FTr) and 19.3 fouls per game. After the All-Star break, the average dropped to 19.8 FTA per game for a 0.225 FTr and 17.4 fouls. The net effect saw league scoring drop from 115.5 points per game to 111.5. While four points are hardly noticeable without the help of a handy score bug, it represented almost a full standard deviation in team points per game.
Whatever your opinion of the league changing their officiating ethos mid-season was, the net result was met with fanfare from the public and media. A common refrain was that games looked like playoff basketball and that defenses finally had a chance to slow down high-powered offenses. With all the positivity surrounding the shift to more physical play, it was believed the trend would continue into the 2024-25 season. To borrow a line from the opening monologue in the Lord of the Rings, “But they were, all of them, deceived.”
Free throws and fouls have come back with a vengeance. It’s still incredibly early, but teams are averaging 26.5 FTA per game, a 0.300 FTr, and 21.9 fouls. Interestingly, the parade to the charity stripe akin to a 1930s soup kitchen hasn’t juiced scoring at all. The league average points per game is down to 113.6 from 114.2 last season, and that’s despite an increase in pace.
The other part that makes the increase in free throw rate so jarring is it is occurring in conjuncture with an all-time high 3-point attempt rate (3PAr). Unsurprisingly, there is a very strong inverse correlation (-0.85) between FTr and 3PAr. This makes sense because most shooting fouls occur closer to the basket, and while fouls on 3-point attempts are growing, they’re still quite rare. Through 82 games, the league 3PAr is 0.420, which would be the highest ever, while the FTr is 0.300, a figure we haven’t seen since 2011 when the 3PAr was 0.222. In NBA history, this is unprecedented. The stars represent where we are in 2024-25, and the rest of the graph is every season since the introduction of the 3-point line.
While a 0.300 FTr isn’t out of the ordinary, pairing it with a massive 3PAr is. And the fact that it’s happening while offensive efficiency is down is an equal shock. So what’s at play here?
The first and most likely explanation is this is a small sample size blip. Weird things happen in small samples. In a week, everything could be back to normal. The second most likely explanation is it’s early in the season, and players are still trying to get up to game speed. On offense, guys are a little out of rhythm, and on defense, a reactionary endeavor, they’re a beat slow and are committing more fouls.
Another explanation is teams and players bought into the hype and entered the season believing much more physicality was going to be allowed. This has seen defenses play much more aggressively and better, but they’ve over-indexed on physicality and the end result is more free throws and fewer points.
However, my subjective view from the handful of games I’ve watched is the referees are rounding into form themselves. 90% of their job is split-second subjective decision-making and they’ll need a few weeks to get their brains perfectly calibrated. Right now they’re defaulting to their old whistling habits, but chances are, the league won’t let a 0.300 FTr continue.