Spurs’ Jeremy Sochan finds success with a bizarre one-handed free throw style

SAN ANTONIO — It’s been hard for San Antonio Spurs forward Jeremy Sochan to find much to laugh about in a season that produced yet another double-digit loss for his team Tuesday night.

Somehow, everyone seems to find something funny every time Sochan approaches the foul line for a free throw.

The 130-118 loss to the Utah Jazz left the Spurs at Frost Bank Center at 4-25 with too many losses tied to the team’s experiment with the 6-foot-8 Sochan as their starting point guard.

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

However, an earlier experiment with Sochan continues to be a rousing success: his bizarre one-handed free throw form makes almost everyone smile.

In a form that may be unique in the history of the game, the only time Sochan touches the basketball with his left hand occurs when he uses both hands to catch it when it is thrown by a referee. Then, so quickly that almost no one notices, he places his right hand under the ball and simultaneously releases his left hand and immediately begins the shot. Complete with 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 Tuesday night, Sochan is 112 of 148 from the foul line in 62 games played since switching to one-handed shooting, a solid 75.7%.

He’s not Steph Curry (career 91.0%), but he’s not Andre Drummond (career 47.8%) either.

He’s also not the first one-handed free throw shooter in NBA history. Most notably, Hall of Famers Bob Pettit (76.1%) and Oscar Robertson (83.8%) shot their free throws one-handed. So did Don Nelson (76.5%), a member of five NBA title teams at the Boston Celtics and, importantly for Sochan, one of Spurs Hall of Fame coach Popovich’s most prized mentors.

During Popovich’s two seasons as an assistant on Nelson’s Golden State Warriors coaching staff in 1992-93 and 1993-94, he observed Nelson help some challenged shooters by having them use only one hand to improve their shots. This made Popovich a supporter of Dr. Nelson’s teaching technique.

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

“Jeremy was in the tank, 45%,” Popovich recalled recently. “I talked to Brett and said, ‘What are we going to do with this guy?’ He had such strange movements (in his shot) that we decided, ‘Let’s make him do it one-handed and see what he thinks.'”

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

“The biggest downside is that most kids will probably be embarrassed to want to do it 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 weird situation and if you don’t want to try, we won’t. But it might be easier to control and let’s take a look.”

“He did it, and I don’t know if instantaneous is the right word, but pretty quickly he executed them and it was a much more consistent shot than he had before. So, we stuck with it and said let’s see how she would do in five games, 10 games, whatever. The success kept coming and she now feels good about herself.

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

“I was going through a bad period where I wasn’t doing enough,” Sochan said. “I was ready to try anything.”

The process began near the basket, with one-handed somersaults to get Sochan comfortable with the sensation of the release. Eventually, the shots came from longer distances and, ultimately, from the free throw line.

“I was practicing a lot, up close, one-handed, with shapes,” Sochan recalled. “We kept bringing him back to the free throw line, then back to close before going back to the free throw line until he started working well in practice.

“So the question was, ‘Why not try it in a game?’ “

The first experiment was a mini-failure but it led to a small change that made a difference.

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

“The first time I got fouled I looked at Coach Pop and he was just smiling at me, nodding his head. So I just said, “Fuck, just do it.” But the one thing I noticed when I did it the first time was that I had dribbled the ball twice and my recovery was different, so it didn’t feel so good and I rushed it.

“The next game in New Orleans I explained (to Popovich and Brown) why I wasn’t going to dribble at all. “Simply take a deep breath, position your hand and lift the ball in one motion.”

Popovich happily backed the quicker, dribble-free release.

Fewer thoughts, greater success.

“Yes, now inhale and shoot,” Popovich said. “We all know that spending too much time on a shot usually doesn’t lead to any success.”

Sochan made 7 of 10 the first time he used his off-dribble technique, which began a 12-game stretch in which he made 24 of 29 free throws (82.7%).

“So, this became my passion, and I’m really happy because I went from 45% to 70%-something,” Sochan said.

Sochan endures some teasing from opponents stationed along the lane as he attempts free throws.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Sochan said. “Someone on the opposing team will be like, ‘What the fuck?’

“But that shit goes in.” “It is what it is and results matter.”

In particular. Spurs fans were able to appreciate Sochan’s free throw style, cheering when he was fouled and cheering when he made both shots. It has become a “thing” at Spurs games, so much so that it prompted the company that produces the team’s iconic TV adverts for the HEB grocery chain to write an advert to air this season featuring Sochan as the protagonist, alongside Wembanyama, Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson.

In the short commercial, Sochan completes several one-handed tasks with various HEB products: cracking an egg like a short-order chef, opening a huge bag of chips with a pop, delivering a plate full of plates of food, opening a jar of sauce and sliding it off a table, all to the amazement of his co-starring teammates.

“A hand,” Wembanyama says.

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

However, there is one thing Sochan is desperate not to be able to achieve single-handedly: counting the number of Spurs’ victories.

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