NBA’s Free-Throw Decline and What It Means for Luka and Lakers

January 15, 2026 at 7:49 am

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

Yesterday, Tom Haberstroh published a detailed piece on Yahoo about the NBA’s sudden free throw decline and the league-wide scoring dip that has followed. It immediately caught my attention, not just because I’ve been following Tom’s work on this topic since 2024, but because this has been sitting in the back of my mind all season. Especially with Luka Dončić opening the year living at the free throw line, leading the NBA with a career high 11.8 attempts per game.

Like Tom, a couple of events in January caught my attention. First, the January 9 loss to the Bucks, one of Luka’s roughest games of the season. An 8-for-25 night, visibly frustrated, struggling to finish through contact, engaged in an all night battle with the referees, as several familiar foul bait attempts turned into awkward, off balance misses without a whistle. Then, two days later, I watched Spurs vs Celtics, followed by Jaylen Brown’s now viral reaction to Boston taking almost no free throws, which became the centerpiece of Tom’s story. Two moments that, on the surface, feel unrelated, but together point toward the same underlying shift happening across the NBA.

I’d recommend everyone read Tom’s story. What I’ll try to add here are my own observations from the Lakers and Dončić perspective, and why this trend matters and is worth keeping in mind as the season develops.

This article is free. If you’ve been enjoying my work, upgrading to a paid subscription is the best way to support more data-driven analysis and breakdowns going forward.

Lakers at the forefront of a decade-long peak in free throw rate

The first thing worth highlighting is the broader state of the NBA and the 2025–26 season so far. Per Basketball Reference, the league is scoring 115.7 points per 100 possessions, the highest mark since this data began being tracked in the 1973–74 season. At the same time, free throw attempts sit at 24.0 per 100 possessions, the highest rate of the past decade, dating back to the 2015–16 season.

Source: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_poss.html

I don’t want to get into whether scoring is too easy or if defenses are at too big of a disadvantage. I’m simply highlighting that the trend of increasing offensive efficiency has continued this season, and that a significant spike in free throw rate compared to the previous two seasons has been a big part of it.

So why does this spike, and any potential reactionary adjustment in the way fouls and free throws are being called, matter more for the Lakers than for most teams? For starters, the Lakers have led the NBA in free throw rate both last season and again this year.

Austin Reaves, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis are all players who consistently draw fouls and get to the free throw line. Last season, Davis led the Lakers at 7.6 free throw attempts per game before the trade. He was then moved for Luka Dončić, who averaged 8.9 free throw attempts per game with the Lakers last season, further reinforcing how central free throws have been to this team’s offensive profile.

This season, Dončić’s free throw volume has climbed to a career high. He currently leads the league at 11.8 attempts per game and has been one of the clearest on-court blueprints behind the free throw spike seen across the NBA this year.

Shooting fouled percentage for Luka Dončić is at a career high (source: Cleaning the Glass)
Dončić getting to the line at that level, and converting them at a career high 79 percent, is a big reason, along with his efficiency inside the arc, why he has remained the NBA’s top scorer despite struggling with his three point shot this season.

NBA calibrating offense and defense on the fly

Per Cleaning the Glass, offensive efficiency steadily climbed through the first three months of the season before dropping off in January. Per Cleaning the Glass data league scoring rose from 115.2 points per 100 possessions in October to 116.0 in November and peaked at 116.7 in December. In January, that number fell to 114.4. The drop is noticeable and has naturally led to speculation about whether the league is reacting to the early-season scoring explosion by adjusting how the game is being officiated. As Haberstroh pointed out in his article, the decline in scoring has been accompanied by a steady drop in free throw rate that reached a new low point in January, fueling visible frustration from players like Brown and Dončić.

We have seen this before, with Luka at the forefront

Again, as Haberstroh explains in his piece, we’ve seen this before. He reported on a similar in-season adjustment in 2024, something I’ve referenced multiple times in past analysis and NBA trends pieces as well. That adjustment happened in March 2024, with commissioner Adam Silver later, somewhat reluctantly, confirming the league had made “a bit of an adjustment along the way.”

My Dončić and Lakers–specific angle here is that a month prior to that adjustment, on January 26, 2024, Dončić scored a career high 73 points in Atlanta. That performance sparked a wave of pundit discussion about whether scoring in the NBA had become too easy, or even a disgrace. I don’t know how much those loud voices contributed to the league’s adjustment, but the reaction that followed was evident.

Watching Luka’s free throw trend going forward

The early-season spike in free throw rate, both league-wide and for Dončić and Reaves (who reached a career high 8.6 free throw attempts per game before his calf strain) specifically, has been one of the more surprising and notable trends of the year.

I don’t have an issue with the NBA attempting to recalibrate, clean up the game, and make it a more enjoyable product to watch. And I’m not suggesting any adjustment is happening because of Dončić alone. Rather, he sits at the intersection of this discussion as one of the league’s highest-profile and most polarizing scorers.

Looking at his free throw attempts and shooting fouls drawn rates, there is a slight downward trend, though so far it has been less drastic than what we’re seeing across the league as a whole. He has finished with 10 or fewer free throw attempts in each of his last three games, though similar stretches have already shown up at points earlier this season.

Luka Dončić free throw attempts per game trend (source: pbpstats)

I think the bigger issue for Dončić, and for other players like Brown, is transparency and consistency, especially if or when bigger shifts are happening. I can understand the frustration of not getting the same calls later in January that were there earlier in the season, or, in Dončić’s case, not getting the whistles he received against the Spurs in the following game against the Bucks. Especially for an emotional, in-the-moment player like him, who has often struggled to adjust to a different night-to-night whistle.

Dončić allowing officiating to affect his play has been a persistent issue throughout his career, and it remains an area he needs to improve to become a more consistent game-to-game performer. In-season swings make that challenge even tougher, and if these trends continue, adapting to them will matter more for the Lakers than for most teams, given their roster composition and the profile of their stars, as the season unfolds.

Comments

LakerTom says

January 15, 2026 at 7:49 am

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

Yesterday, Tom Haberstroh published a detailed piece on Yahoo about the NBA’s sudden free throw decline and the league-wide scoring dip that has followed. It immediately caught my attention, not just because I’ve been following Tom’s work on this topic since 2024, but because this has been sitting in the back of my mind all season. Especially with Luka Dončić opening the year living at the free throw line, leading the NBA with a career high 11.8 attempts per game.

Like Tom, a couple of events in January caught my attention. First, the January 9 loss to the Bucks, one of Luka’s roughest games of the season. An 8-for-25 night, visibly frustrated, struggling to finish through contact, engaged in an all night battle with the referees, as several familiar foul bait attempts turned into awkward, off balance misses without a whistle. Then, two days later, I watched Spurs vs Celtics, followed by Jaylen Brown’s now viral reaction to Boston taking almost no free throws, which became the centerpiece of Tom’s story. Two moments that, on the surface, feel unrelated, but together point toward the same underlying shift happening across the NBA.

I’d recommend everyone read Tom’s story. What I’ll try to add here are my own observations from the Lakers and Dončić perspective, and why this trend matters and is worth keeping in mind as the season develops.

This article is free. If you’ve been enjoying my work, upgrading to a paid subscription is the best way to support more data-driven analysis and breakdowns going forward.

Lakers at the forefront of a decade-long peak in free throw rate

The first thing worth highlighting is the broader state of the NBA and the 2025–26 season so far. Per Basketball Reference, the league is scoring 115.7 points per 100 possessions, the highest mark since this data began being tracked in the 1973–74 season. At the same time, free throw attempts sit at 24.0 per 100 possessions, the highest rate of the past decade, dating back to the 2015–16 season.

Source: https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_poss.html

I don’t want to get into whether scoring is too easy or if defenses are at too big of a disadvantage. I’m simply highlighting that the trend of increasing offensive efficiency has continued this season, and that a significant spike in free throw rate compared to the previous two seasons has been a big part of it.

So why does this spike, and any potential reactionary adjustment in the way fouls and free throws are being called, matter more for the Lakers than for most teams? For starters, the Lakers have led the NBA in free throw rate both last season and again this year.

Austin Reaves, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis are all players who consistently draw fouls and get to the free throw line. Last season, Davis led the Lakers at 7.6 free throw attempts per game before the trade. He was then moved for Luka Dončić, who averaged 8.9 free throw attempts per game with the Lakers last season, further reinforcing how central free throws have been to this team’s offensive profile.

This season, Dončić’s free throw volume has climbed to a career high. He currently leads the league at 11.8 attempts per game and has been one of the clearest on-court blueprints behind the free throw spike seen across the NBA this year.

Shooting fouled percentage for Luka Dončić is at a career high (source: Cleaning the Glass)
Dončić getting to the line at that level, and converting them at a career high 79 percent, is a big reason, along with his efficiency inside the arc, why he has remained the NBA’s top scorer despite struggling with his three point shot this season.

NBA calibrating offense and defense on the fly

Per Cleaning the Glass, offensive efficiency steadily climbed through the first three months of the season before dropping off in January. Per Cleaning the Glass data league scoring rose from 115.2 points per 100 possessions in October to 116.0 in November and peaked at 116.7 in December. In January, that number fell to 114.4. The drop is noticeable and has naturally led to speculation about whether the league is reacting to the early-season scoring explosion by adjusting how the game is being officiated. As Haberstroh pointed out in his article, the decline in scoring has been accompanied by a steady drop in free throw rate that reached a new low point in January, fueling visible frustration from players like Brown and Dončić.

We have seen this before, with Luka at the forefront

Again, as Haberstroh explains in his piece, we’ve seen this before. He reported on a similar in-season adjustment in 2024, something I’ve referenced multiple times in past analysis and NBA trends pieces as well. That adjustment happened in March 2024, with commissioner Adam Silver later, somewhat reluctantly, confirming the league had made “a bit of an adjustment along the way.”

My Dončić and Lakers–specific angle here is that a month prior to that adjustment, on January 26, 2024, Dončić scored a career high 73 points in Atlanta. That performance sparked a wave of pundit discussion about whether scoring in the NBA had become too easy, or even a disgrace. I don’t know how much those loud voices contributed to the league’s adjustment, but the reaction that followed was evident.

Watching Luka’s free throw trend going forward

The early-season spike in free throw rate, both league-wide and for Dončić and Reaves (who reached a career high 8.6 free throw attempts per game before his calf strain) specifically, has been one of the more surprising and notable trends of the year.

I don’t have an issue with the NBA attempting to recalibrate, clean up the game, and make it a more enjoyable product to watch. And I’m not suggesting any adjustment is happening because of Dončić alone. Rather, he sits at the intersection of this discussion as one of the league’s highest-profile and most polarizing scorers.

Looking at his free throw attempts and shooting fouls drawn rates, there is a slight downward trend, though so far it has been less drastic than what we’re seeing across the league as a whole. He has finished with 10 or fewer free throw attempts in each of his last three games, though similar stretches have already shown up at points earlier this season.

Luka Dončić free throw attempts per game trend (source: pbpstats)

I think the bigger issue for Dončić, and for other players like Brown, is transparency and consistency, especially if or when bigger shifts are happening. I can understand the frustration of not getting the same calls later in January that were there earlier in the season, or, in Dončić’s case, not getting the whistles he received against the Spurs in the following game against the Bucks. Especially for an emotional, in-the-moment player like him, who has often struggled to adjust to a different night-to-night whistle.

Dončić allowing officiating to affect his play has been a persistent issue throughout his career, and it remains an area he needs to improve to become a more consistent game-to-game performer. In-season swings make that challenge even tougher, and if these trends continue, adapting to them will matter more for the Lakers than for most teams, given their roster composition and the profile of their stars, as the season unfolds.

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- DJ2KB24 says
  
  January 15, 2026 at 9:55 am
  
  Good stuff LT!
  
  Log in to Reply

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