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Message: [QUOTE="Phil, post: 4589617, member: 66"] There is not a player in the nation who literally can't make three consecutive free throws, sans guessing what you mean is that some players are so poor at the free-throw line that the probability of hitting three consecutive shots is effectively zero. I'm not sure that's true but it's definitional. A 40% free-throw shooter is going to hit three in a row 6% of the time. That's low but not zero. And that's probably an extreme. While there might be the occasional player that it's free throws at that poor a rate, I doubt they are taking threes other than in desperation. If they really are a 40% free-throw shooter, then they are more likely than not to miss the single shot for three points and get zero. Mathematically (assuming independence which is likely to be close to accurate) the expected results were identical. I suppose one could dream up an edge case, where a team is down by one in the closing seconds of the game, so taking three individual foul shots is highly likely to produce at least one point ensure that the game doesn't end. But why an earth would you be taking a three if you are down by one in closing seconds? [/QUOTE]