Welcome to Airball City, population that guy.
It’s hard not to cut Appalachian State center Brian Okam some slack on his free throw shooting—he is 7-foot tall junior and big men are notoriously bad shooters—but this attempt from the charity line is beyond horrible. Airballing a free throw takes some serious lack of talent, but Okam’s attempt nearly goes straight up and down, looking almost as if some phantom spirit blocked it on its way to the basket. You laugh, but how else can you explain why or how a basketball player could throw up such a ridiculously terrible free throw like that without reaching for a few implausible explanations.
Appalachian State ended up beating Western Carolina 70-64 on Saturday, so I think it’s safe to assume that Okam never saw the floor the last 5 minutes or so of the game. Not because the Mountaineers didn’t want Western Carolina playing Hack-a-Okam, but because the poor fellow probably died of embarrassment after his horrendous free throw attempt.
