Commanding the Foul Shot: A New Ensemble of Free Throw Metrics

With the NBA's adoption of in-game limb tracking in 2023, Sony's Hawk-Eye system now captures high-resolution, 3D poses of players and the ball 60 times per second. Linking these data to key events such as shots, passes, and rebounds opens a new era in NBA analytics. Here, we leverage Hawk-Eye tracking to introduce a novel ensemble of metrics for evaluating free-throw shooting and demonstrate that our framework captures skill more effectively than traditional make-or-miss statistics. Inspired by baseball analytics, we introduce command, which quantifies the quality of a free throw by measuring a shooter's accuracy and precision near the basket's bullseye. This metric recognizes that some makes (or misses) are better than others and captures a player's ability to execute quality attempts consistently. To identify what drives command, we define launch-based metrics assessing consistency in release velocity, angle, and 3D position. Players with greater touch -- i.e., more consistent launch dynamics -- exhibit stronger command as they can reliably control their shot trajectory. Finally, we develop a physics model to identify the range of launch conditions that result in a make and to determine which launch conditions are most robust to small perturbations. This framework reveals "safe" launch regions and explains why certain players, such as Steph Curry, excel at free throws, providing actionable insights for player development.