Free throw rate is the stat scouts keep ignoring

Everyone can tell you a player's shooting percentages, and almost nobody can tell you how often he gets to the line.

Two wings. Both score around the same amount per minute, both shoot roughly the same from three, both look fine on film. One gets to the free throw line four times a night. The other gets there once. Which one do you want?

It should not be a hard question, and yet it consistently is, because free throw rate is treated as a footnote rather than a skill.

Fouls drawn are the most underpriced thing in basketball. Not because free throws are efficient, although they are, but because of everything they drag along behind them. They stop the opposing break dead. They put a rim protector two fouls closer to the bench in the second quarter. They force a coach to change coverage because the drop is getting whistled. A player who gets to the line consistently is not just scoring, he is bending the conditions the rest of the game is played under, and none of that appears in his shooting split.

There is also a durability argument that runs the other way from what you would expect. Contact finishers take a beating, sure. But the alternative for a scorer is a diet of contested jumpers over length, which is a low-percentage way to accumulate the same points, and the ones who cannot draw fouls tend to compensate by shooting more, which is how you get a high-usage player with a mediocre scoring rate and a coach who cannot work out why the offense stalls.

What I look for is the mechanism, not the number, because the number can be faked. Rip-throughs and leg kicks are cheap and the officiating on them changes every few seasons. Real free throw rate comes from three things: getting downhill with the shoulder past the hip of the defender, going up through contact rather than into it, and drawing the second defender on a drive so the tag is late and hands are in the wrong place. Those hold up in playoff officiating. The tricks do not.

If a young player shows a high free throw rate built on the real mechanism, I will forgive a lot of bad jump shooting, because that part can be taught and the other part mostly cannot. And if a player scores well without ever getting fouled, I want to know why before I pay him.