Finishing touch: Spurs’ Jeremy Sochan is shooting one-handed free throws… and making them now

SAN ANTONIO – It’s been hard for San Antonio Spurs forward Jeremy Sochan to smile much in a season that included another double-digit loss for his team on Tuesday night.

Somehow it seems like everyone finds something funny when Sochan steps to the foul line for a free throw.

The 130-118 loss the Utah Jazz handed the Spurs at Frost Bank Center left them at 4-25, with too many of those losses tied to the team’s experiment with the 6-foot-1 Sochan as starting point guard.

That drill was deemed a failure and scrapped with Sochan back in the lead in a starting lineup that features rookie sensation Victor Wembanyama at center and second-year guard Malaki Branham at point.

However, an earlier experiment with Sochan remains a great success: his quirky one-handed free throw form makes almost everyone smile.

With a shape that is perhaps unique in the history of the game, the only time Sochan touches the basketball with his left hand is when he uses both hands to catch it as it is thrown by an official. Then, so quickly that you hardly notice, he places his right hand under the ball, while at the same time releasing his left hand and immediately starting his shooting stroke. Complemented by a perfect release, the new form has produced a dramatic improvement that Gregg Popovich appreciates and Sochan’s teammates marvel at.

After making both free throws after being fouled on Tuesday night, Sochan is 112 of 148 from the line in the 62 games he has played since switching to the one-handed shot, a healthy 75.7 percent.

He’s not Steph Curry (career 91.0 percent), but neither is he Andre Drummond (career 47.8 percent).

He’s also not the first one-handed free throw shooter in NBA history. Notably, Hall of Famers Bob Pettit (76.1 percent) and Oscar Robertson (83.8 percent) shot their free throws with one hand. That includes Don Nelson (76.5 percent), a member of five Boston Celtics NBA title teams and, importantly for Sochan, one of Spurs Hall of Fame head coach Popovich’s most valued mentors.

During Popovich’s two seasons as an assistant on the coaching staff of Nelson’s Golden State Warriors in 1992-93 and 1993-94, he watched Nelson help a pair of challenged shooters by allowing them to use just one hand to improve their shooting strokes. It made Popovich an advocate of shot doctor Nelson’s teaching technique.

Sochan’s one-handed free throw has been a revelation since he first used it last season in a game against the Rockets on Dec. 19, 2022, in Houston. He then entered game No. 23 of his rookie season having made just 11 of 24 (45.8 percent) free throws. But Popovich and his veteran assistant, Brett Brown, had worked with the then 19-year-old to change everything about his approach to foul shooting.

“Jeremy was 45 percent in the tank,” Popovich recently recalled. “I talked to Brett and said, ‘What are we going to do with this guy?’ He had so many strange movements (on his shot) that we decided, ‘Let’s just let him do it one-handed and see how he thinks about it.’ ”

It didn’t take long for Popovich and Brown to convince Sochan to give the one-handed shot a try. He hated his atrocious free throw percentage even more than the coaches did, admitting it was embarrassing, which helped Popovich’s pitch to Sochan to try.

“The biggest downside to that is that most guys will probably be embarrassed because they want to do that in front of the whole world,” Popovich said. “That was our biggest concern, so I went to him and said, ‘What do you think about this? I don’t want to put you in a strange situation and if you don’t want to try, we won’t do it. But maybe it’s easier to check and let’s take a look at it.’

“He did it, and I don’t know if instant is the right word, but he made them quickly and it was a much more consistent stroke than before. So we just stuck with it and said, let’s see how he does with it over five games, 10 games, whatever. The success just kept coming and now he feels good about it.”

When Popovich started preaching the virtues of the one-handed free throw, he discovered Sochan was already a member of the choir.

“I was going through a bad period where I wasn’t making enough of it,” Sochan said. “I was willing to try anything.”

The process started close to the basket, with one-handed somersaults to get Sochan comfortable with the feel of the release. Ultimately, the shots came from longer distances and ultimately from the foul line.

“I was practicing a lot, up close, with one hand,” Sochan remembers. “We kept getting him back to the free-throw line, then getting close again, then back to the free-throw line until it started working well in practice.

“So then it was, ‘Why don’t you try it in a game?’ ”

The first experiment was a minor failure, but it made a small change that made a world of difference.

“Well, the first game wasn’t the best,” Sochan said, painfully recalling his 1-of-4 foul shooting against the Rockets. “It was very new to me and I didn’t know how that very first attempt would go.

“The first time I got fouled, I looked at Coach Pop and he just smiled at me and nodded his head. So I just said, ‘F– it, just do it.’ But the one thing I noticed the first time I did it was that I dribbled the ball twice and my pickup was different, so it didn’t feel that good and I rushed a little bit.

“The next game in New Orleans I explained (to Popovich and Brown) why I wasn’t going to dribble at all. Just take a deep breath, hold my hand and raise the ball in one motion.

Popovich happily endorsed the faster, no-dribble release.

Less thinking, more success.

“Yeah, now he just takes a breath and shoots it,” Popovich said. “We all know that spending too much time on a shot usually doesn’t yield success.”

Sochan made 7 of 10 the first time he used his no-dribble technique, starting a 12-game streak in which he made 24 of 29 (82.7 percent) free throws.

“So that became my thing, and I’m really happy that’s because I went from 45 percent to over 70,” Sochan said.

Sochan is slightly mocked by opponents lining the court as he attempts free throws.

“Oh yes, of course,” Sochan said. “Someone from the other team will say, ‘What the fuck?’

‘But that goes in. It is what it is and the results count.’

In particular. Spurs fans enjoyed Sochan’s free-throw style, cheering when he was fouled and rejoicing when he made both shots. It became a thing at Spurs games, enough for the company that produces the team’s iconic TV commercials for the HEB supermarket chain to write a spot to air this season with Sochan as star, along with Wembanyama , Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson.

In a short period of time, Sochan completes several tasks with one hand using various HEB products: cracking an egg like a chef, opening a large bag of chips with a pop, delivering a bowl of plates of food, opening a plate of food and a jar of salsa and slides it down from a table top, much to the surprise of his fellow teammates.

“On the one hand,” says Wembanyama.

“He just can’t turn it off,” Vassell adds.

However, there is one thing Sochan is very keen not to achieve with one hand: counting the number of Spurs wins.

(Top photo of Sochan: Jed Jacobsohn / NBAE via Getty Images)