Everybody talks about the Minnesota Timberwolves' previous lack of a true point guard, and how the addition of LaMelo Ball will alleviate a lot of the playmaking and offensive pressure that Anthony Edwards had to deal with last season. However, one of their biggest issues of all last season, nobody seems to talk about, is free-throw shooting.
The Wolves were absolutely abysmal from the free-throw line last season, and if they're going to become a true championship contender, they need to make better use of these 'free' points. The Wolves ranked 29th in the league in free-throw percentage last year; the only team they beat was the Milwaukee Bucks, who weren't a serious team.
LaMelo Ball will greatly improve the Timberwolves' free-throw percentage
Over his career, Ball has struggled with field-goal efficiency at times, but that doesn't do justice to just how talented a pure shooter he is. He's a career 36.5 percent 3-point shooter, and that's on heavy volume and extreme difficulty. Another key aspect is his elite free-throw shooting.
He's a career 84.8% free-throw shooter, but a lot of that is being dragged down from his rookie season which came in at 75.8%. Outside of that year, he's never shot it below 84.3% at the line, and last season was his most successful yet.
Last year, Ball shot 89.9 percent from the line, which ranked in the 90th percentile for the entire league last year according to Cleaning the Glass. Ball's percentage from the line last year ranked higher than anyone else on the Wolves roster.
This free-throw shooting will benefit the Wolves the most in clutch situations. It gives them another guy that they can trust with utmost confidence to knock down two free throws to put the game out of reach. Between Ball, Ayo Dosunmu, Anthony Edwards, and Jaden McDaniels, the Wolves can have a clutch-time lineup that has four guys who are all trustworthy at the line.
Granted, Ball can't cover up all of the Wolves' free-throw problems. A lot of that falls on Rudy Gobert after he had an uncharacteristically bad season at the line last season, even by his standards, where he shot a hilarious 52.6 percent. If Gobert can get that number up at least to the mid-60s, that by itself will give the Wolves a giant boost in that department.
At the very least, end-of-game scenarios will be slightly less stressful this season when Ball steps to the line, a welcome sight after how poorly the team shot from the stripe last season.
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