NBA Players with Mid-Career Improvement in FT%

As a fan of unusual events I’m both excited and fascinated by the career of Tyson Chandler.
Let me explain why…

• he was drafted second overall… yet he played less than 25 minutes in each of first three seasons.
  Obviously he came straight out from high-school which didn’t help but still it’s pretty unusual treatment of such high draft pick.

• he changed teams 5 times which is already well above average and he is 29 years old.

• his toe was the main reason for a rescinded trade which is a very rare event in itself
  [according to prosportstransactions.com there were only SEVEN of them!].

• last year alone he was traded as a salary dump… and he was the key piece for a championship team.
  Quite a rollercoaster ride, huh? And I can’t count how many times it happened but I’m pretty sure that’s not a typical way to acquire one of the best players on championship team.

• most importantly [at least for this post], he did something which most big guys [or maybe even all people] can only dream about: he learnt how to shoot free throws very late into his playing career!

  In his first 8 years Tyson Chandler attempted 1789 free throws and made 1071 of them for a 59.87% mark but in his ninth season he suddenly became 73+% shooter. And it wasn’t a fluke either, in all following seasons he made at least 73% of his freebies.

For the purpose of this post I’d like to focus on the last part and explore it: How often does such sudden improvement happen? Who did have the most impressive mid-career improvement in FT% in history?

Also you may not know this from this blog but I like playing basketball a lot and it’s the first topic which not only I can relate to personally but it also makes me appreciate it even more than just a curiosity because I feel like in terms of veteran’s basketball skills “you are who you are”.
Yet somehow at least one old dog learnt a new trick… maybe there is a light at the end of tunnel for all of us ;-)

OK, let’s start with basics, I downloaded a file from basketballreference.com with historical data and I compared FT% in every season after 5th [with minimum 150 free throw attempts] to Free Throw Percentage based on all combined makes and attempts at this point of player’s career. And here are the results…